Biofabrication & Hydrogels

3D Printing

Bone / Soft Tissue Engineering

A wound is the result of “disruption of normal anatomic structure and function” and wound healing is a complex process where a tissue repairs itself after an injury [1]. For cutaneous wound healing, this repair process can be summarized into several overlapping stages, namely hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation and remodeling (Figure 1) [1]. An ideal wound dressing must create and keep a moist environment, protect the wound from secondary infection, absorb wound exudates, decrease wound surface necrosis, incite growth factors, be flexible, as well as antigenic and biocompatible [2]. Hydrogels are the obvious choices which have such these properties as well as, their microstructure resembles the nature of native ECM and they exhibit excellent biocompatibility and promote cell proliferation.

Figure 1: Stages of normal cutaneous wound healing. (Adapted from Ref. [1]).

Therefore, in our research group we fabricate and characterize different hydrogel-based biomaterials in a variety of structures for wound healing applications [3,4]. Moreover, we are dealing with the development of composite hydrogels containing inorganic fillers for tissue engineering [5].

Figure 2: Fluorescent microscopic images of normal human dermal fibroblast cells adhered on Alginate/soy protein/bioactive glass hydrogel films after 14 days of cultivation. The cells were stained for F-actin (red) and nuclei (green)

[1] S. Tansaz, A.R. Boccaccini, Biomedical applications of soy protein: A brief overview, J. Biomed. Mater. Res. Part A. (2015) n/a–n/a.
[2] M. Kokabi, M. Sirousazar, Z.M. Hassan, PVA–clay nanocomposite hydrogels for wound dressing, Eur. Polym. J. 43 (2007) 773–781.
[3] B. Sarker, D.G. Papageorgiou, R. Silva, T. Zehnder, F. Gul-E-Noor, M. Bertmer, J. Kaschta, K. Chrissafis, R. Detsch, A.R. Boccaccini, Fabrication of alginate–gelatin crosslinked hydrogel microcapsules and evaluation of the microstructure and physico-chemical properties, J. Mater. Chem. B. 2 (2014) 1470.
[4] S. Tansaz, A.-K. Durmann, R. Detsch, A.R. Boccaccini, Hydrogel films and microcapsules based on soy protein isolate combined with alginate, J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 134 (2017) 1–9.
[5] B. Sarker, W. Li, K. Zheng, R. Detsch, A.R. Boccaccini, Designing Porous Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds with Enhanced Mechanical Properties from Composite Hydrogels Composed of Modified Alginate, Gelatin, and Bioactive Glass, ACS Biomater. Sci. Eng. 2 (2016) 2240–2254.