Process Control and Novel Materials for the Reactive Jet Impingement Process

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Biofabrication techniques are used to process natural and synthetic biomaterials, for example including cells, proteins and drugs, in order to create living, tissue engineered structures. These structures are being used to research the development of new drugs and cell-based therapies for a wide range of medical conditions.This research proposal focuses on a new 3D printing technique called Reactive Jet Impingement (ReJI) which can be used for biofabrication. The ReJI technique has some advantages over existing techniques in terms of the number of cells it can deposit within a certain volume, and in terms of the range of the materials and shapes which it can print on. The research programme will focus on three things: (i) Improving the technology, by developing a computational model of the process to support and inform experimental studies, and through scaling up the technology in terms of print capability.(ii) Extending the range of materials which can be processed using the technology.(iii) Applying the technology to the development of clinically relevant tissue models for two selected application areas in drug testing for liver cancer and cardiac tissue engineering.