Designer materials and structures for molecular regenerative medicine

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Regenerative medicine is an area in which effective collaboration between engineering and biomedicine is particularly critical. Tissue repair techniques require scaffolds to facilitate cell growth, and next-generation scaffolds need to have improved, better defined and more predictable 3D macro-structures and mesoscopic and macroscopic features. Prof. Jamie Davies's laboratory has developed an innovative method to fabricate hydrogels and focuses on the mechanisms by which cells organize into tissues, while Prof. Lynne Regan's laboratory has developed a new class of protein-based hydrogels using SpyTag (ST)/SpyCatcher (SC) peptide/protein pair to create functional biomaterials with enhanced crosslinking. Thus, this collaborative project will involve the facilities in both labs to develop a method to produce well controlled protein-based hydrogels by rimming flow using the rotational internal flow layer engineering technology and pilot data indicates the formation of precise 3D tube scaffolds. Meso- and microscopic features of scaffolds can be specified by using hydrogels that allow precise arrangement of recombinant proteins, allowing the identity and position of cell attachment sites to be precisely specified. Since the hydrogel forms simply upon mixing of the two protein components, without the need for additives, change of temperature, or irradiation, gelation with cells in situ is fully compatible with cell viability. The project will use expertise and tools in the collaborating labs to optimize such hydrogels and cells for a range of applications.