Investigation of engineered tissues or scaffolds in simulated ‘host environments’ by developing miniaturised bioreactor systems.
PhD Supervisor(s): Dr Tao Sun and Dr Stella Georgiadou.
Tissue engineering aims to develop neo-tissues or viable tissue substitutes to restore, maintain or improve the functions of a tissue or a whole organ. However, many of these research efforts have been challenged by the inability of the engrafted tissues or scaffolds to properly integrate into the host environments to make a functional biological unit. Therefore, a thorough investigation of the basic biology of this integration process is crucial and the performances of some engineered tissues or scaffolds are usually evaluated using animal models. A quantitative study at large-scale is yet prohibitive as host-tissue integration is usually regulated by a variety of factors such as scaffold composition, scaffold mechanical property, open pore and topographic structures of a scaffold, different growth factors and cytokines, cellular co-transplantation, positional information of host and donor cells etc., and animal testing is usually limited by ethical and economic issues.
