Carnegie Mellon University
Abbott Lab

Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering

The Abbott lab at Carnegie Mellon University works at the interface of materials science and regenerative medicine. We investigate how the 3D microenvironment affects tissue development and disease. Our current research focuses on adipose tissue engineering strategies, silk biomaterials and non-invasive tissue assessments to study obesity and it's link to type II diabetes. For more information about what we do, check out our current research projects, publications, and outreach events. To join our team please contact us!

 


Professor Abbott is featured on "My Future Tech Podcast!" 

Recent updates

1/2025 Khushi graduates with her Master's and becomes a PhD student in the lab!

1/2025 Prof. Abbott comments on the great work coming out of the Omentto lab in the Science News Explores article titled: "A lucky lab accident produces Spider-Man-like silk.” 

11/2024 Prof. Abbott is invited to give a talk on the adipose disease modelling work in the lab at the Lipedema foundation annual meeting.

11/2024 Prof. Abbott  gives a seminar at Tufts on the labs cultivated meat research.

11/2024 Lindsey gives a seminar a Bellarmine on her 3D printing adipocyte work.

10/2024 Prof. Abbott is part of a team that has secured a 42 million dollar award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to accelerate the development of implantable, cell-based bioelectronic devices that deliver patient-specific therapy and monitor disease status, for conditions like hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, in real time. Read more here.

10/2024 Prof. Abbott is interviewed by PCN Capital news about cultivated meat research.

 Check out more recent events in the group

Recent Publications

Johnston EK, Dassau T, Muraskin NA, Abbott RD. Automated adipocyte and lipid tracer for immunohistochemistry images. Sci Rep. 2025 Feb 7;15(1):4643.

Huff LK, Amurgis CM, Kokai LE, Abbott RD. Optimization and validation of a fat-on-a-chip model for non-invasive therapeutic drug discovery. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2024 Jun 25:12:1404327.

Huff LK, Ling Z, DeBari MK, Ren X, Abbott RD. “Repurposing Decellularized Lungs to Generate Vascularized Fat.” Adipose-Derived Stem Cells Methods and Protocols. 3rd edition. Edited by Jeffrey Gimble, Bruce Bunnell, Cecilia Sanchez, and Trivia Frazier. Lab protocol Series - Methods in Molecular Biology, published by Springer Nature 2024.

Dewal RS, Yang FT, Baer LA, Vidal P, Hernandez-Saavedra D, Seculov NP, Ghosh A, Noé F, Togliatti O, Hughes L, DeBari MK, West MD, Soroko R, Sternberg H, Malik NN, Puchulu-Campanella E, Wang H, Yan P, Wolfrum C, Abbott RD, Stanford KI. Transplantation of Committed Pre-adipocytes from Brown Adipose Tissue improves Whole-body Glucose Homeostasis. iScience. 2024 Jan 17.

DeBari MK, Johnston EK, Griffin MD, Scott JV, Ilzuka E, Sun W, Webster-Wood VA, Abbott RD. A Preliminary Study on Factors That Drive Patient Variability in Human Subcutaneous Adipose Tissues. Cells 2024, 13(15), 1240.

Check out more publications from the group...