Chonbuk National University (CBNU; 전북대학교; 全北大學校; Jeonbuk Daehakgyo) is located in the historical city of Jeonju, Republic of Korea. As the flagship national university for the Jeollabuk-do Province, it was founded in 1947 by the provincial fund within the framework of the Korean national university system, following the liberation of the country.

Prof. Gilson Khang’s lab is located at Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeollabuk do, South Korea. Prof. Khang’s lab began to operate in 1998, and since then, 220 master students and 28 doctoral students were trained and graduated with achieving 100% employment in pharmaceutical or bio-related jobs. Over the past 20 years, the lab gained ground in the field of science and technology research related to biomaterials, biogeneric drugs, stem cells, and designing scaffolds. The papers related to these fields were published over 670 papers peer reviewed. Also, 148 monographs and textbooks were published and 89 patents were applied and registered. 

His lab members have played a pivotal role in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine and have contributed greatly to the development of new technologies on bio-cartilage, bio-bone, central nerve regeneration, retinal regeneration, corneal regeneration, and functional smart scaffolds. The representatively applied biomaterials in the lab are polylactide-co-glycolide (PLGA) for bone and skin tissue engineering, silk fibroin for corneal and bone tissue engineering, duck’s feet collagen for bone and skin tissue engineering, gellan gum for cartilage and retinal tissue engineering, demineralized bone particles (DBP) for central nerve, bone, and cartilage tissue engineering, etc. In addition to biomaterials, studies on biogeneric drugs were actively performed, and recently exosome-based drug delivery system is actively being conducted. 

The REMIX project which focuses on investigating and developing natural or nature-inspired biomaterials strongly fitted with Prof. Khang’s lab. Since 2017, an interdisciplinary collaboration among European and Asian experts (University of Trento in Italy, the University of Minho in Portugal, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Mongolia, and Jeonbuk National University in South Korea) have been actively performed. To build-up a research hub of nature-derived biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative materials, researchers and professors traveled to different countries every year to learn and exchange knowledge.

http://www.cbnu.edu/eng/