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Ioannis yannas biography

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Ioannis Yannas

Education

  • 1957

    HARVARD COLLEGE

    A.B.

  • 1959

    MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)

    M.S.

  • 1965

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

    M.A.

  • 1966

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

    Ph.D.

Research Interests

The principal research interest of Dr Yannas is the process of induced organ regeneration used to replace organs that are either severely injured or are terminally diseased.

Initial discovery of dermis regeneration. In 1976 Yannas and John F. Burke, MD discovered the first scaffold with regenerative activity.  Although the strctural features of a scaffold with regenerative activity were not appreciated at that time, they were eventually (1989, 2015; see references below) recognized as those of a highly porous analog of the extracellular matrix based on type I collagen, a biodegradable scaffold with highly specific structural features. These required features included a specific range of the pore size, defined degradation half-life and specified surface chemistry. When this cell-free scaffold was grafted on deep skin wounds in guinea pigs  it was unexpectedly obse

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Ioannis Yannas to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

Regenerating a new organ

As it turned out, Yannas’ artificial skin did more than just block infection and retain moisture — it actually helped to regenerate the skin.

At first, however, Yannas and Burke thought they had failed miserably. After several unsuccessful attempts to develop a dressing that would speed up the healing process, one of their membranes finally had an impact on the timeframe of healing — by significantly delaying it rather than speeding it up as expected. Yannas was crushed by this development.

“At that point,” he says, “I began to think that our project to help burn victims was over. Nevertheless, I could not stop myself from trying to understand what had gone wrong. I mounted an effort to understand why the collagen membrane had delayed closure. I spent two nights studying tissue samples from the various experiments. Epiphany occurred when I noticed that the dressing that had delayed closure had not produced a scar.”

In its place, says Yannas, was a strange kind of tissue he

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Ioannis Yannas

Greek-American engineer

Ioannis V. Yannas (born 14 April 1935) is a Greek-American engineer.

Yannas was born on 14 April 1935 in Greece.[1][2] Yannas emigrated to the United States to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees completing his bachelor's at Harvard College in 1957, a master of arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959, then a master's of science and doctorate at Princeton University in 1965 and 1966, respectively. He is a professor at MIT.[3][4]

Yannas is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Engineering, elected in 1978 and 2017, respectively.[5][6] He was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 1993,[7] and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015.[2][8]

References

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