Tag: tissue regeneration

Origami Inspires New Tech for Tissue Regeneration

Origami – the Japanese art of folding paper into shapes and figures – dates back to the sixth century. At UMass Lowell, it is inspiring researchers as they develop a 21st century solution to the shortage of tissue and organ donors.

 

Gulden Camci-Unal, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, and her team of student researchers are designing new biomaterials that could someday be used to repair, replace or regenerate skin, bone, cartilage, heart valves, heart muscle and blood vessels, and in other applications.

 

Using origami as inspiration, Camci-Unal and her team are using plain paper to create centimeter-scale scaffoldings where the cells can grow and then applying microfabrication techniques to generate new biomaterials known as tissue mimetics.

 

“Paper is a low-cost, widely available and extremely flexible material that can be easily fabricated into three-dimensional structures of various shapes, sizes and configurations,” said Camci-Unal … read more

Injectable gel holds promise as wound-healing material

 

A research team led by UCLA biomolecular engineers and doctors has demonstrated a therapeutic material that could one day promote better tissue regeneration following a wound or a stroke.


During the body’s typical healing process, when tissues like skin are damaged the body grows replacement cells. Integrins are class of proteins that are important in the cellular processes critical to creating new tissue. One of the processes is cell adhesion, when new cells “stick” to the materials between cells, called the extracellular matrix. Another is cell migration, where at the cell’s surface, integrins help “pull” the cell along through the extracellular matrix to move cells into place. However, these processes do not occur in brain tissue that has been damaged during a stroke. This is why scientists are trying to develop therapeutic materials that could promote this form of healing.

 

The injectable gel-like material, which is called a hydrogel, that the UCLA researchers developed helps this repair process by forming a scaffold inside the wound … read more