About

Jason A. Burdick is the Bowman Endowed Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on designing new biomaterials that can be processed through various fabrication methodologies to meet the needs of medicine, including translational therapeutics and tissue models. His laboratory synthesizes cytocompatible and cell-instructive biomaterials, often derived from biopolymers such as hyaluronic acid, which are crosslinked into water-swollen hydrogels and biodegradable elastomers. Many of these biomaterials are engineered to be shear-thinning and self-healing by incorporating dynamic and reversible interactions of polymers or microparticles. His group employs techniques such as electrospinning, microfluidics, and 3D printing—including extrusion and stereolithography—to control the structure and function of these materials for biomedical applications.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Biology
• Cell biology
• Organic chemistry
• Polymer chemistry
• Computer Science
• Biomedical engineering
• Medicine
• Biotechnology
• Biophysics
• Polymer science
• Engineering
• Composite material
• Chemical engineering
• Systems engineering

Selected publications

• Sticking Together: Injectable Granular Hydrogels with Increased Functionality via Dynamic Covalent Inter‐Particle Crosslinking

  Small · 2022 · 121 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Materials science
  • Chemical engineering
  • Polymer chemistry

  Granular hydrogels are an exciting class of microporous and injectable biomaterials that are being explored for many biomedical applications, including regenerative medicine, 3D printing, and drug delivery. Granular hydrogels often possess low mechanical moduli and lack structural integrity due to weak physical interactions between microgels. This has been addressed through covalent inter-particle crosslinking; however, covalent crosslinking often occurs through temporal enzymatic methods or photoinitiated reactions, which may limit injectability and material processing. To address this, a hyaluronic acid (HA) granular hydrogel is developed with dynamic covalent (hydrazone) inter-particle crosslinks. Extrusion fragmentation is used to fabricate microgels from photocrosslinkable norbornene-modified HA, additionally modified with either aldehyde or hydrazide groups. Aldehyde and hydrazide-containing microgels are mixed and jammed to form adhesive granular hydrogels. These granular hydrogels possess enhanced mechanical integrity and shape stability over controls due to the covalent inter-particle bonds, while maintaining injectability due to the dynamic hydrazone bonds. The adhesive granular hydrogels are applied to 3D printing, which allows the printing of structures that are stable without any further post-processing. Additionally, the authors demonstrate that adhesive granular hydrogels allow for cell invasion in vitro. Overall, this work demonstrates the use of dynamic covalent inter-particle crosslinking to enhance injectable granular hydrogels.

  DOI

• 3D bioprinting of high cell-density heterogeneous tissue models through spheroid fusion within self-healing hydrogels

  Nature Communications · 2021 · 439 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Cell biology
  • Biomedical engineering
  • Biology

  Cellular models are needed to study human development and disease in vitro, and to screen drugs for toxicity and efficacy. Current approaches are limited in the engineering of functional tissue models with requisite cell densities and heterogeneity to appropriately model cell and tissue behaviors. Here, we develop a bioprinting approach to transfer spheroids into self-healing support hydrogels at high resolution, which enables their patterning and fusion into high-cell density microtissues of prescribed spatial organization. As an example application, we bioprint induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac microtissue models with spatially controlled cardiomyocyte and fibroblast cell ratios to replicate the structural and functional features of scarred cardiac tissue that arise following myocardial infarction, including reduced contractility and irregular electrical activity. The bioprinted in vitro model is combined with functional readouts to probe how various pro-regenerative microRNA treatment regimes influence tissue regeneration and recovery of function as a result of cardiomyocyte proliferation. This method is useful for a range of biomedical applications, including the development of precision models to mimic diseases and the screening of drugs, particularly where high cell densities and heterogeneity are important.

  DOI

• Nuclear envelope wrinkling predicts mesenchymal progenitor cell mechano-response in 2D and 3D microenvironments

  Biomaterials · 2021 · 69 citations

  • Cell biology
  • Biology
  • Biophysics
  DOI

• Chemically Modified Biopolymers for the Formation of Biomedical Hydrogels

  Chemical Reviews · 2020 · 553 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Chemistry
  • Polymer science
  • Polymer chemistry

  Biopolymers are natural polymers sourced from plants and animals, which include a variety of polysaccharides and polypeptides. The inclusion of biopolymers into biomedical hydrogels is of great interest because of their inherent biochemical and biophysical properties, such as cellular adhesion, degradation, and viscoelasticity. The objective of this Review is to provide a detailed overview of the design and development of biopolymer hydrogels for biomedical applications, with an emphasis on biopolymer chemical modifications and cross-linking methods. First, the fundamentals of biopolymers and chemical conjugation methods to introduce cross-linking groups are described. Cross-linking methods to form biopolymer networks are then discussed in detail, including (i) covalent cross-linking (e.g., free radical chain polymerization, click cross-linking, cross-linking due to oxidation of phenolic groups), (ii) dynamic covalent cross-linking (e.g., Schiff base formation, disulfide formation, reversible Diels-Alder reactions), and (iii) physical cross-linking (e.g., guest-host interactions, hydrogen bonding, metal-ligand coordination, grafted biopolymers). Finally, recent advances in the use of chemically modified biopolymer hydrogels for the biofabrication of tissue scaffolds, therapeutic delivery, tissue adhesives and sealants, as well as the formation of interpenetrating network biopolymer hydrogels, are highlighted.

  DOI

• The bioprinting roadmap

  Biofabrication · 2020 · 397 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Systems engineering

  This bioprinting roadmap features salient advances in selected applications of the technique and highlights the status of current developments and challenges, as well as envisioned advances in science and technology, to address the challenges to the young and evolving technique. The topics covered in this roadmap encompass the broad spectrum of bioprinting; from cell expansion and novel bioink development to cell/stem cell printing, from organoid-based tissue organization to bioprinting of human-scale tissue structures, and from building cell/tissue/organ-on-a-chip to biomanufacturing of multicellular engineered living systems. The emerging application of printing-in-space and an overview of bioprinting technologies are also included in this roadmap. Due to the rapid pace of methodological advancements in bioprinting techniques and wide-ranging applications, the direction in which the field should advance is not immediately clear. This bioprinting roadmap addresses this unmet need by providing a comprehensive summary and recommendations useful to experienced researchers and newcomers to the field.

  DOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Spatially Controlled Cellular Behavior in 3D Hydrogels: An Integrated Research, Teaching, and Outreach Approach

  NSF · $400k · 2009–2014

• Engineered Developmental Microenvironments: Cartilage Formation and Maturation

  NIH · $2.5M · 2009–2026

• Engineered Granular Hydrogels for Endogenous Tissue Repair

  NIH · $2.5M · 2022–2027

• NIH Grant R01EB008722

  NIH · $3.0M · 2019

• Dynamic Acellular Materials for Repairing Dense Connective Tissues

  NIH · $7.5M · 2009–2030

Frequent coauthors

• Robert L. Mauck

  Philadelphia VA Medical Center

  141 shared

• Claudia Loebel

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  56 shared

• Matthew D. Davidson

  University of Colorado Boulder

  49 shared

• Christopher B. Rodell

  Drexel University

  41 shared

• Kristi S. Anseth

  University of Colorado Boulder

  40 shared

• Robert C. Gorman

  University of Nebraska–Lincoln

  39 shared

• Joseph H. Gorman

  32 shared

• Jonathan H. Galarraga

  University of Pennsylvania

  32 shared

Education

• B.S.

  University of Wyoming

  1998

• Ph.D.

  University of Colorado

  2002

Awards & honors

• Overall Achievement Award, Department of Chemical & Biologic…
• Elected Member, National Academy of Medicine (2024)
• Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers, Clarivate Analytics (2018,…
• International Award, European Society for Biomaterials (2024…
• International Fellow, The Canadian Academy of Engineering (2…

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