Biomimetic control of ovarian follicle development: combining multi-scale soft biomaterials with biochemical interactions

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What drives ovarian follicle development? Visualizing the interplay between molecular signalling and multi-scale mechanics: Ovulation (monthly release of an egg) must be tightly regulated in the ovary to ensure a normal fertile lifetime of a woman. Dysregulation of this process can lead to morbidity and compromised fertility, due to e.g. polycystic ovary syndrome, premature ovarian insufficiency. Unravelling the complexity of factors that determine how eggs, and their encapsulating follicles, develop is key to understanding ovarian dysfunction. The student will develop novel techniques to investigate the systems biology of follicle development. They will create spatially-structured biomaterials for 3D-culture of follicles in vitro and use these to investigate how mechanobiological regulation of follicle development interacts with more traditional concepts of regulation by hormones and growth factors. The biomaterial systems will reflect the complex structure of the ovary which exhibits dramatic variations in mechanical properties across multiple lengthscales. Biomimetic investigation of multiscale mechanical effects is a new concept with broad application in mechanobiology and organoid research.