Kaiming Ye, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Biomedical Engineering
Office: 203 Engineering Hall
Phone: (479) 575-5315 (O)- (479) 575-4489 (Lab)
Fax: (479) 575-2846
E-mail: kye@uark.edu
Teaching and Research
Positions Available
Ph.D. Research Assistantships for Influenza Vaccine Development
Courses taught
BENG 3213: Biomedical Engineering: Methods and Applications (a undergraduate course offered every spring)
BENG 5233: Tissue Engineering (a graduate course offered every fall)
Research Interests
- Embryonic stem cell engineering
- Tissue and organ regeneration
- Gene Therapy
- Biosensor and cell molecular imaging
- Vaccine development
- Nanomedicine
Research Activities in Dr. Ye’s Lab (Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab)
The Stem cell and Tissue Engineering Lab focuses on organ and tissue regeneration and remodeling through stem cell engineering. Other researches include nanomedicine, in vivo imaging, nano-drug delivery, bio-detection and sensing. These works in essence address the fundamental biomedical engineering problem of developing new technology for organ regenerative medicine and new intracellular indicators for studying stem cell differentiation and tissue regeneration.
• Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem (hES) Cells into Therapeutic Insulin-Producing Cells for Diabetes Cell Therapy
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The shortage of transplantable pancreatic islets to treat diabetes has drawn a lot of attentions to generate renewable sources of insulin-producing ß-cells from hES cells. Many works have been done to design various protocols to direct the differentiation of hES cells into insulin-producing cells. Both in vitro and in vivo studies suggest that the insulin-producing cells generated using these approaches are close to immature fetal ß cells, i.e. these cells are less valuable or useful for islet transplantation. These cells cannot restore the near-physiological insulin secretion capability in transplanted diabetic animal models. These difficulties imply that the differentiation of ES cells into mature insulin-producing cells is not straightforward as we thought previously. A more efficient approach needs to be established to mimic in vivo pancreatic development. To address these issues, we have developed a 3-D culture system and demonstrated that mouse ES (mES) cells could be efficiently differentiated into mature insulin-producing ß cells. Our experiment revealed that the maturity of ß cells can be remarkably elevated in 3-D cultures, compared to 2-D control experiments. Only mature ß cells can restore the near-physiological insulin-secretion capacity in islet cell transplanted diabetic patients. Our experiment manifestly demonstrated the advantage of the 3-D ES cell differentiation system developed in our lab. To augment this technology in producing glucose responsive, insulin-producing cells from hES, we initiated a project to study the feasibility of directing hES cell differentiation into mature ß cells from hES cells. The techniques developed through this work will help design better 3-D differentiation system to generate various lineage cells for regenerative medicine.
• Fluorescence Microscopy Imaging of Intracellular Molecules Using Genetically-Engineered Fluorescent Indicators
This project focuses on the visualization of glucose and further characterization of glucose homeostasis within living cells using a genetically engineered intracellular molecular indicator. One of the key issues to assist the understanding of the pathophysiology of diabetes and obesity is the transport and metabolism of glucose in various cells and tissues. Both of these processes are dependent upon the local concentration of glucose. A variety of methods for measuring blood glucose are readily available to researchers. Nevertheless, the continuous monitoring of glucose within living cells has been a challenge in diabetes researches due to the lack of a methodology that is nondestructive to the cells. To this end, we have genetically engineered an intracellular glucose indicator that can visualize the glucose through a glucose binding induced Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) signal transduction mechanism. With this indicator, we have determined the intracellular glucose concentration using FRET microscopy imaging. Compared to FRET microscopy imaging, lifetime FRET (Fluorescent lifetime microscopy imaging (FLIM)) is more sensitive due to its high temporal resolution. In addition, the problems associated with spectral bleed-through or cross-talk in the intensity FRET can be alleviated using FLIM, as lifetime of a fluorophore is dependent solely upon the local environment of the fluorophore. With funding from NIH and ABI, we recently set up a FILIM system in our laboratory and work on determining the intracellular glucose with fluorescent indicators and glucose uptake in skeletal muscle cells, providing more data on glucose transport and phosphorylation in insulin-resistant subjects. This approach can be adapted to monitor many intracellular molecules real-time. 
• A Nano-Drug Delivery Platform for Simultaneous Cancer Imaging and Drug Delivery
Targeted drug delivery is highly desired in cancer therapy, as most of anti-cancer drugs are toxic to normal cells and tissues. A number of targeted drug delivery systems have been developed and tested in various clinical settings. Nevertheless, the pharmacokinetics of drug-loaded nanoparticles, as well as the release of drugs from the nanoparticles, remains largely unknown. This project focuses on development of a novel nanoparticle bioconjugate for targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs into tumors such as prostate tumors.
• Refrigeration-Free Vaccines
This project focuses on developed refrigeration-free vaccines against infectious disease such as influenza virus infection. The vaccines are developed through a cell surface engineering technique developed in our laboratory.
Selected Publications
§ Wang, X and K. Ye (2009) Three-dimensional differentiation of embryonic stem cells into islet-like insulin-producing clusters. Tissue Engineering (in press)
§ Veetil, J., and Ye, K. (2009) Tailored carbon nanotubes for tissue engineering applications. Biotechnol. Prog. (in press)
§ S. Jin, J.C. Leach, and K. Ye, “Chapter 43: Nanoparticle-based Gene Therapy” in Methods in Molecular Biology book series ”Microfluids, Nanotechnologies, and Physical Chemistry Science in Separation, Detection, and Analysis of Biomolecules”, ed. Lee, W. James, (2009) Humana Press, USA, in press
§ . Jin and K. Ye, “siRNA to Antiviral Treatment” in Book “Small Interfering RNA Research”, ed. Frank Columbus (2009) Nova Science Publishers, Inc., USA, In press.
§ Garett, J.R., Wu, X., Sha, J. and Ye, K. (2008) pH-insensitive Glucose Indicators, Biotechnol. Prog. 24, 1085-1089
§ J. Xie, K.R., Aatre, V.K., Varadan, J.V. Veetil, and K. Ye (2008) Synthesis of aligned carbon nanotubes by microwave chemical vapor deposition and investigation of their covalent bonding with antibodies for bio-applications. International Journal of Nanoparticles, 1, 119-135
§ Veetil, J.V. and Ye, K. (2007) Development of immunosensors using carbon nanotubes, Biotechnol. Prog. 23:517-531.
§ Jin, S. and Ye, K. (2007) Nanoparticle-mediated Drug Delivery and Gene Therapy, Biotechnol. Prog. 23, 32-41.
§ Veetil, J.V., Mehta, M. Wang, A. and Ye, K. (2007) Quantum-dot based lateral flow strip assays for biomedical applications. Proc. 2007 IEEE Region 5 Technical Conference, 309-313.
§ Garrett, J.R., Wu, X., and Ye, K. (2007) Development of a pH-insensitive glucose indicator for continuous glucose monitoring. Proc. 2007 IEEE Region 5 Technical Conference, 171-174.
§ Ye, K. and Ueda, M. (2006) Combinatorial Bioengineering: Editorial. Biotechnol. Prog. 22, 923-923.
§ Ye, K. and Jin, S. (2006) Potent and specific inhibition of retrovirus production by co-expression of multiple siRNAs directed against different regions of viral genomes. Biotechnol. Prog. 22, 45-52.
