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Tissue Engineering research at NUI Galway

Recent NUI Galway work on the biomechanics of tissue engineering has appeared on the cover of the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering and as a science feature in the Irish Times. The aim of tissue engineering is to grow natural tissue in a laboratory to replace or repair a patient's natural tissue. Cells are grown on an artificial scaffold which provides structural support. The cells require an environment that matches the conditions in the body. To develop a tissue-engineered tendon, for example, the cells in the laboratory should experience the same stretching and pulling as a native tendon. When the scaffold is stretched in the laboratory, the cells on it are also stretched. But exactly how much stretch is required to signal cells to grow into tendon? What forces and stretch does a cell experience when its scaffold is loaded?


Engineers at NUI Galway are working on these questions in collaboration with a team at TCD. This research recently featured as the cover story in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, one of the most important international publications in the field. After developing a computer representation of cells on a scaffold, NUI Galway postgraduate student Adam Stops found that two distinct kinds of cell stretch occur. Cells that spread over the surface of a single scaffold strut (left) undergo very small stretches. However, cells that bridge two or more struts of the foam-like scaffold (right) are subjected to very large stretches, because the struts move and bend into different orientations under the applied load, and the cells are dragged in tow. These results allow the stretch magnitudes of cells to be predicted, and the tissue engineering environment to be more accurately controlled.

Reference

Stops AJF, McMahon LA, O'Mahoney D, Predergast PJ, McHugh PE, A Finite Element Prediction of Strain on Cells in a Highly Porous Collagen-Glycosaminoglycan Scaffold, J. Biomech. Eng. 130:061001 (2008).

    

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