Cheng Inducted Into Prestigious Medical Institute’s College of Fellows

Ke Cheng, NC State College of Veterinary Medicine professor of regenerative medicine, has been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Cheng, also a professor in NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, was elected into AIMBE’s College of Fellows for “contributions to designing new biomaterials and targeted cell therapies for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.”

AIMBE Fellows are nominated annually by peers and represent the top 2 percent of the medical and biological engineering community, according to the Washington, D.C.-based organization.

Cheng was formally inducted at an AIMBE meeting in Washington at the end of March. UNC’s Koji Sode, also in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, was among the honorees. Fellows are employed in academia, clinical practice, government and the medical industry.

Cheng leads the BioTherapeutics Laboratory based at the CVM, conducting groundbreaking research on heart and lung tissue regeneration and improved therapeutic stem cell delivery.  

Last year, Cheng was awarded an American Heart Association grant for research into repairing heart attack damage. In the same year, he released a pilot study showing that stem cells decorated with platelet nanovesicles increases their ability to find and remain at the site of heart attack injury.

Since joining the CVM faculty in 2013 as part of the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program, Cheng led research that developed synthetic cardiac stem cells, shown that therapeutic stem cells exit the bloodstream differently than previously thought and demonstrated a quick and simple way to generate large numbers of lung stem cells. His research is often supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund.

Cheng was named a University Faculty Scholar in 2016.