City College of New York     |     Department of Biomedical Engineering


Our lab engineers solutions to address current challenges in medicine. We design, synthesize, and evaluate new biomaterials that change the way we deliver drugs and cells. These materials exhibit cooperative or heterogeneous features, exemplified in nature.

A central theme in our lab is understanding how local organization affects global properties. Our biologically-inspired materials illustrate this concept via assembly at two length scales:

  • Molecular (<1 μm) for Targeted Therapeutics, and
  • Cellular (>1 μm) for Tissue Architecture.

Our research exploits current knowledge of cancer and vascular biology to engineer new drug delivery and tissue engineering platforms.

February 2013
Welcome Biran Wang to the Auguste Lab!

September 2012
Debra Auguste was awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award.

April 2012
Congratulations to Marjan Rafat for defending her PhD dissertation.

May 2011
Debra Auguste will be presenting on Tissue Origami at the 4th International Conference on Tissue Engineering in Chania, Crete, Greece.

April 2011
Congratulations Tina Tan for getting into Harvard Medical School!

March 2011
Congratulations to George Ye for winning $10,000 in the business competition Harvard i3 Innovation Challenge TECH Prize. See press release.

February 2011
Debra Auguste was awarded the NSF CAREER Award. See press release.

December 2010
Congratulations Jin-Oh You for your drug delivery review published in Journal of Biological Engineering. This review focuses on the use of bioresponsive polymers in drug delivery.

Gunawan R, Almeda D, Auguste DT, “Complementary targeting of liposome to IL-1α and TNF-α activated endothelial cells via the transient expression of VCAM1 and E-selectin,” Biomaterials 2011, 32: 9848-9858. (pdf)

You J, Rafat M, and Auguste DT. Crosslinked, heterogeneous colloidosomes exhibit pH-induced morphogenesis. Langmuir 2011; 27(18): 11282-11286; published online, DOI: 10.1021/la202430m. (pdf)

You J, Rafat M, Ye GJC, Auguste DT, “Nanoengineering the heart: Conductive scaffolds enhance connexin 43 expression,” Nano Letters; 2011 Sep 14; 11(9): 3643-8; published online, DOI: 10.1021/nl201514a. (pdf)

You J, Almeda D, Ye GJC, Auguste DT.  Bioresponsive matrices in drug delivery.  Journal of Biological Engineering 2010; 4:15.  (pdf)

Gunawan R, Auguste DT.  Immunoliposomes that target endothelium in vitro are dependent on lipid raft formation.  Molecular Pharmaceutics 2010; 7(5):1569-1575. (pdf)