Designing topographically textured microparticles for induction and modulation of osteogenesis in mesenchymal stem cell engineering.

Professor Needham has been at Duke since 1987 and over the years has developed many collaborative and scholarly relationships across the campus and Medical School. He holds Faculty and membership appointments as: Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Center for Bioinspired Materials and Material Systems; Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering; Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center; and the Duke Cancer Institute.  Internationally, he holds a joint appointment as Professor of Translational Therapeutics in the School of Pharmacy, at the University of Nottingham, UK.  He also collaborates with preclinical researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Center, in Rotterdam, NL. 
For the past 35 years Needham's Lab has developed and used a platform technology of micropipette manipulation to manipulate single and pairs of micro bubbles, droplets and particles in order to assess their behavior in well-defined fluids and solution conditions.  Recently his research and development has focused on nucleation, growth and stability of nanoparticles.  Applications of these fundamental particle and interfacial studies have primarily focused on advanced drug delivery treatments for cancer and now COVID19 with a nasal and throat spray prophylactic and early treatment regimen.