Bioengineering merges principles of biology and engineering to design and create innovative solutions that benefit living organisms and improve healthcare, agriculture, industry, and the environment. It encompasses various disciplines, including genetic engineering, biomaterials, tissue engineering, and biomedical devices. One key focus involves manipulating biological systems at the molecular and cellular levels, leveraging this understanding to develop new drugs, therapies, and medical technologies. Bioengineers utilize their expertise in engineering principles to design artificial organs, prosthetics, or medical devices that integrate seamlessly with the human body, improving quality of life and advancing healthcare.
Additionally, bioengineering plays a crucial role in addressing environmental challenges by developing sustainable solutions. This includes bioremediation techniques to clean up pollutants, genetically modified crops for increased yields and resilience, and biofuels derived from renewable resources. By applying engineering principles to biological systems, bioengineering continues to drive innovation, offering solutions to complex problems across multiple domains while respecting and harnessing the power of living organisms.
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1. A contractile force measurement system for hiPSC-derived cardiac tissue integrated with an ultrathin, stretchable nanomesh
Published: April 25, 2026 | Lab on a Chip, 26(12), 3703-3713
Authors: Shogo Iwai, Daisuke Sasaki, Tetsutaro Kikuchi, Katsuhisa Matsuura, Kenjiro Fukuda, Sunghoon Lee, Tatsuya Shimizu, Takao Someya, Shinjiro Umezu
Developed a contractile-force measurement system for hiPSC-derived cardiac tissue using an ultrathin, stretchable polyurethane nanomesh substrate. The porous fibrous nanomesh provides high mechanical compliance, serving as a biomimetic elastic substrate that overcomes prior challenges in mechanical stability, sustained cell adhesion, and system integration for measuring contractile force under real-time mechanical stretch.
2. Biomimetic Microfibers for Myelin-Enhancer Screening and Neural Regeneration
Published: 2026 (~April 17) | Cyborg and Bionic Systems, 7, 0565
Authors: Lili Quan, Akiko Uyeda, Atsushi Sekiguchi, Ze Zhang, Kazuhisa Sakai, Tsunehiko Takamura, Ruijuan Zhang, Noritaka Ichinohe, Shinjiro Umezu, Rieko Muramatsu
A bioengineered microfiber platform mimicking neurite architecture and surface chemistry enables high-content quantification of oligodendrocyte myelin wrapping. Compound screening on this platform identified dimemorfan, a clinically used sigma-1 receptor agonist, as a potent myelin-wrapping enhancer that accelerated remyelination and functional recovery in demyelinated mice and increased white matter volume in treated individuals.
3. Adaptive 4D‐Printed Vascular Stents With Low‐Temperature‐Activated and Intelligent Deployment
Published: January 15, 2026 | Advanced Functional Materials, 36(27), e21468
Authors: Yannan Li, Yifan Pan, Chikahiro Imashiro, Chaolun Xu, Jianxian He, Jingao Xu, Kewei Song, Ze Zhang, Chen Gao, Junbo Jiang, Runhuai Yang, Kayo Hirose, Shinjiro Umezu
Fabricated microarchitected coronary artery stents via projection micro-stereolithography (PµSL) 4D printing of a PCL-based shape-memory polymer composite. Incorporating diethyl phthalate as a plasticizer tuned the thermal transition temperature to ~37°C, enabling autonomous, rapid shape recovery at body temperature without external heating — demonstrated mechanical flexibility, radial strength, and cytocompatibility in vitro and in vivo.
4. Leveraging Multi-Material Ceramic Additive Manufacturing and Intrinsic Material-Based Catalyst Metallization to Realize Robust and Damage-Free 3D Ceramic Electronics
Published: 2026 | Materials Today, 93, 103202
Authors: Kewei Song, Ze Zhang, Zifu Fan, Yifan Pan, Weiyang Wan, Yannan Li, Shinjiro Umezu, Hirotaka Sato
Combines multi-material ceramic additive manufacturing with a catalyst-based metallization approach intrinsic to the ceramic material itself, avoiding damage-prone post-processing steps to produce robust, damage-free 3D ceramic electronic structures — relevant to biocompatible ceramic implant electronics.
5. Confinement Controlled Swelling Mechanisms of Hydrogels in Multi-Material Architectures
Published: 2026 | Materials & Design
Authors: Ze Zhang, Mohamed Adel, Jianxian He, Yannan Li, Chaolun Xu, Yifan Pan, Rongyi Zhuang, et al.
Examines how rigid/semi-rigid surrounding material in a multi-material printed structure confines and redirects hydrogel swelling behavior, relevant to the group’s stent and sensor work. Description partly inferred from title; full text not accessed.
6. Scaffold stiffness affects oligodendrocyte proliferation via cell traction forces
Published: August 5, 2025 | Biomaterials Science, 13(16), 4482-4493
Authors: Haruki Watanabe, Akiko Uyeda, Lili Quan, Shogo Iwai, Ze Zhang, Shinjiro Umezu, Tatsunori Suzuki, Rieko Muramatsu
Evaluated how substrate stiffness affects the phenotype and transcriptome of MO3.13 human oligodendrocyte-lineage cells. Cells on gels of varying stiffness showed different growth potentials; RNA sequencing revealed stiffness-dependent expression of proliferation and actin-cytoskeleton genes, and blocking actin polymerization prevented these growth changes — showing they are mediated by cell traction forces, relevant to CNS regeneration drug assessment.
7. Complex Architecture Fabrication with Photosensitive PEEK-based Ink via Vat Photopolymerization and Two-Step Thermal Treatment
Published: June 25, 2025 | Additive Manufacturing, 108, 104840
Authors: Ze Zhang, Kewei Song, Rongyi Zhuang, Jianxian He, Yi Yang, Yifan Pan, Takeshi Mino, Kayo Hirose, Shinjiro Umezu
A high-solid-content photosensitive PEEK ink enables vat-photopolymerization printing of complex PEEK geometries (overcoming FDM’s low resolution and poor interlayer bonding), followed by two-step thermal treatment restoring PEEK’s crystallinity and improving thermal performance, mechanical strength, and corrosion resistance — significant given PEEK’s established use in load-bearing biomedical implants.
8. Fibroblast Density is a Risk Factor for Drug-induced Arrhythmias
Posted: January 19–22, 2025 | bioRxiv 2025.01.19.633080
Authors: Kayo Hirose, Shinjiro Umezu, Daisuke Sato
Using physiologically detailed mathematical models of the human heart with drug-induced ion-channel heterogeneity, the study varied fibrosis density (0–35%) to assess effects on premature ventricular complexes. Diffuse fibroblast infiltration was shown to contribute to focal and reentrant arrhythmia formation under drug-induced repolarization heterogeneity, identifying fibroblast density as an independent arrhythmia risk factor.
9. Photosensitive PEEK Ink Enables Digital Light Processing 3D Printed High-performance Small Architected-Plastics
Preprint: 2024 | arXiv:2406.18157
Authors: Ze Zhang, Kewei Song, Rongyi Zhuang, Jianxian He, Yi Yang, Yifan Pan, Takeshi Mino, Kayo Hirose, Shinjiro Umezu
Preprint precursor to the Additive Manufacturing paper above; develops the same photosensitive PEEK ink for DLP printing, enabling small, high-performance architected PEEK structures with high resolution and precision beyond what extrusion-based PEEK printing can achieve.
10. Titanium Culture Vessel Presenting Temperature Gradation for the Thermotolerance Estimation of Cells
Published: August 7, 2023 | Cyborg and Bionic Systems, 4, 0049
Authors: Chikahiro Imashiro, Yangyan Jin, Motoaki Hayama, Takahiro G. Yamada, Akira Funahashi, Katsuhisa Sakaguchi, Shinjiro Umezu, Jun Komotori
Developed a metallic cell-culture vessel with a built-in temperature gradient across its surface, allowing thermal cytotoxicity responses of cancer cells (MCF-7) and normal fibroblasts to be assessed simultaneously across a full temperature range in one experiment — addressing the bottleneck of needing many separate experiments to optimize hyperthermia cancer-treatment parameters.
11. Fabrication of Spiral Low-Cost Microchannel with Trapezoidal Cross Section for Cell Separation Using a Grayscale Approach
Published: June 30, 2023 | Micromachines, 14(7), 1340
Authors: Mohamed Adel, Ahmed Allam, Ashraf E. Sayour, Hani F. Ragai, Shinjiro Umezu, Ahmed M. R. Fath El-Bab
Used grayscale lithography with direct CO₂-laser engraving on PMMA to fabricate trapezoidal-cross-section spiral microfluidic channels at drastically reduced cost (<30 cents) and fabrication time (20 min) versus conventional methods. Demonstrated white-blood-cell separation from whole blood, achieving 90.14% separation efficiency at 1% hematocrit and an optimal flow rate of 800 µL/min.
12. Cell-Based Microfluidic Device Utilizing Cell Sheet Technology
Published: January 27, 2022 | Cyborg and Bionic Systems, 2022, 9758187
Authors: Katsuhisa Sakaguchi, Kei Akimoto, Masanori Takaira, Ryu-ichiro Tanaka, Tatsuya Shimizu, Shinjiro Umezu
Fabricated luminal (tube-like) microfluidic structures purely from stacked living cell sheets: microwires were sandwiched between layered fibroblast cell sheets, which adhered to each other, then the wires were removed to leave a hollow channel. This cell-only biofabrication approach can supply culture medium to very high-density cell sheets, contributing to organ-on-a-chip development without synthetic microchannel materials.
13. Simultaneous measurement of contractile force and field potential of dynamically beating human iPS cell-derived cardiac cell sheet-tissue with flexible electronics
Published: August 12, 2021 | Lab on a Chip, 21(20), 3899-3909
Authors: Takashi Ohya, Haruki Ohtomo, Tetsutaro Kikuchi, Daisuke Sasaki, Yohei Kawamura, Katsuhisa Matsuura, Tatsuya Shimizu, Kenjiro Fukuda, Takao Someya, Shinjiro Umezu
Developed a novel system using 500 nm-thick flexible electronic sheets to simultaneously measure contractile force and extracellular field potential of dynamically beating iPS-cell-derived cardiac cell-sheet tissue — previously impossible on rigid substrates that mechanically restrict beating. Validated for pharmacological studies and assessment of excitation-contraction coupling parameters like the electro-mechanical window.