Polymeric Hydrogels for Regenerative Medicine Applications

Regenerative medicine aims to repair injured or diseased tissues using a multidisciplinary approach to stimulate natural repair mechanisms or promote healing through the transplantation of cells, often the patient’s own stem cells. This project aims to develop a novel, injectable, self-assembling hydrogel matrix for use in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. By incorporating chemical cues to promote cell adhesion and proliferation within the matrix, this cell scaffold will support the infiltration of the patient’s cells and will also be capable of acting as a delivery vehicle for stem cells and biological therapeutics as well as a bioink for 3D printing of tissue constructs.

This project will require applicants with a thorough grounding in synthetic organic chemistry and, in addition to chemical synthesis and analysis, will provide interdisciplinary training opportunities in biomaterials and cell biology, with techniques likely to include cell culture, biomaterial modification, fluorescence microscopy, metabolic assays, immunocytochemistry, histology and scanning electron microscopy.