Doctoral thesis success: Sara Gil Cantero
Congratulations to Sara Gil Cantero on successfully defending her doctoral thesis titled “Immune risk management of biomimetic scaffolds” on 29th July, 2025. Sara carried out her doctoral project at Medical University Vienna (MUV), Austria, supervised by Prof. Johannes Stoeckel, at the MUV Institute for Immunology, in co-tutelle with Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini.
The project was carried out in the frame of the Doctoral Training Network Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions “PERSPECTIVES FOR FUTURE INNOVATION IN TENDON REPAIR” (P4FiT), of which Prof. Boccaccini was a principal investigator, coordinated by Prof. Helder Santos. The defense was conducted in hybrid form, in presence in Vienna, and online.
Prof. Boccaccini highlighted the innovative character of Sara’s project in the field of immune risk management of biomimetic scaffolds, in this case electrospun fibrous scaffolds, an area of increasing interest in the biomaterials field. The impact of the morphological and chemical characteristics of tendon biomimetic scaffolds was studied and Toll-like receptors (TLRs) reporter cells were applied to evaluate the interaction between the immune system and the biomaterials. The results obtained by Sara are an important contribution to the field and several high impact papers have been already published resulting from Sara’s thesis, for example: [1,2]. Many congratulations to Sara for the successful defense of her doctoral thesis, we wish Sara all the best in her future career.
[1] S. Gil Cantero, et al., Impact of morphological features and chemical composition of tendon biomimetic scaffolds on immune recognition via Toll-like receptors, Biomater. Sci., 2024, 12, 4695-4712. DOI: 10.1039/D4BM00147H
[2] S. Gil Cantero, et al., Recognition of degradation-derived products from biomedical scaffolds by Toll-like receptors, Biomaterials, 2026, 324, 123442.
