Optimisation of scaffold matrix for epithelial regeneration on tissue engineered airway implants.

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Patients who have sustained trauma or required surgery to the voice box and windpipe (larynx or trachea) can develop irreversible scarring leading to severe breathing difficulties that can be life threatening. Whilst conventional treatments are able to reduce scarring and improve breathing it can leave a patient unable to talk or swallow. Furthermore, in a subset of patients reconstruction fails, resulting in severe breathing difficulties and/or the need for a permanent breathing tube to be surgically placed within the neck. Breathing tubes require the patient to nebulise daily and need daily maintenance which can significantly impact on a patient's quality of life. In addition, tracheostomy tubes can be very stigmatising leading to psychological and social problems. The use of new laboratory techniques has made it possible to engineer new organs within the laboratory and transplant them into sufferers to replace the damaged area. Our group has demonstrated the viability of this technology by transplanting the world's first stem-cell grown windpipe in both an adult and a child to replace an irreversible stricture. Despite the clinical success, a number of hurdles exist before this technology can be translated to every day clinical practice, namely there is a pressing need to improve the regeneration of the cells that line the inside of the graft to prevent scarring and help with cough, speech and swallowing. Cells are best grown on protein scaffolds that act as a map to direct the cells where to attach and divide. My project intends to take cells from the lung and grow them on a number of different types of scaffold in order to determine which is the best. This new knowledge will then be applied to regenerate a more robust inner lining within the laboratory. By producing a new lining that can be used as part of a stem cell based windpipe or voice box transplant we hope to greatly improve the safety and outcome of this type of surgery and thus provide new hope to hundreds of desperate sufferers across the UK. This project will take place at University College London (UCL). UCL is amongst the world's premier centres for biomedical research, as confirmed by the results of the UK's latest research assessment exercise (RAE 2008): the numbers of our researchers shown in RAE 2008 to be carrying out world-leading research places UCL among the top universities in the world. In particularly, I will work as part of an established multidisciplinary team already tasked with providing novel therapies for diseased or damaged head and neck tissue which will allow me to draw on a range of expertise and resources unrivalled in any other part of the world.