Researcher

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

Profile

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a biomedical engineer at Columbia University who is a world leader in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Her laboratory has developed innovative bioreactor systems and biomaterial scaffolds for engineering functional human tissues, including cardiac tissue, bone, cartilage, lung, and vascularized composite tissues. Her tissue-engineered cardiac patches—composed of human cardiomyocytes derived from pluripotent stem cells aligned on electrospun scaffolds and conditioned in bioreactors with electrical and mechanical stimulation—exhibit near-adult electrophysiological and mechanical properties. These heart-on-chip and cardiac patch technologies have applications in drug cardiotoxicity testing and potential therapeutic use in heart failure. She has also developed joint-on-a-chip systems and bone-cartilage composite grafts under active clinical investigation. Vunjak-Novakovic has founded and co-founded multiple companies and has been a prominent advocate for translating tissue engineering research to clinical practice. With over 700 publications and more than 50 patents, her research is directly relevant to pharmaceutical companies developing organ-on-chip platforms, contract research organizations offering tissue-based toxicity assays, and medical device companies developing regenerative implants.

Industry Ties