Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Utah Health have identified brain circuitry differences that might be associated with suicidal behavior in individuals with mood disorders. The study, published in Psychological Medicine, provides a promising lead toward tools that can predict which individuals are at the highest risk for suicide.

The University of Illinois at Chicago has received $2.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to investigate non-opioid pain management strategies for people with kidney disease, which affects about 15% of adults in the U.S.

Lithium-carbon dioxide batteries are attractive energy storage systems because they have a specific energy density that is more than seven times greater than commonly used lithium-ion batteries. However, until now, scientists have not been able to develop a fully rechargeable prototype, despite their potential to store more energy.

The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a $3.8 million, four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to further its work, along with several partners, supporting early childhood education and to prepare early childhood educators.

Engineered tissues and organs have been grown with various degrees of success in labs for many years. Many of them have used a scaffolding approach where cells are seeded onto biodegradable supportive structures that provide the underlying architecture of the organ or tissue desired.  But scaffolds can be problematic — ultimately, they should degrade and disappear, but timing that decomposition to coincide with the maturation of the organ is tricky, and sometimes degradation byproducts can be toxic. Now, a research team led by Eben Alsberg, the Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Bioengineering and Orthopaedics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has developed a process that enables 3D printing of biological tissues without scaffolds using “ink” made up of only stem cells. They report their results in the journal Materials Horizons.