Tissue engineering modalities for advancing women’s health

One of primary debilitating conditions in women’s health is pelvic Organ prolapse (POP), particularly affecting 50% of post-menopausal women, and current surgical treatments utilising non-degradable polypropylene (PP) meshes often result in adverse events such as mesh erosion, exposure, and chronic pain due to persistent foreign body response (FBR). These complications have led to regulatory bans on PP meshes and highlighted the urgent need for safer and more effective alternative surgical devices to tackle this problem. This project will apply state-of-the-art tissue engineering approaches, combining novel biomaterials to develop alternative surgical materials providing native tissue mimetic architecture and enhanced functionality by innovative cellularisation approaches. This research project aims to design, fabricate, and evaluate a novel tissue-engineered construct with bioactive components (therapy cells or cell-derived biologics). By leveraging translational bioengineering approaches using biodegradable polymers, the project will boost native tissue strengthening through superior tissue integration. A deeper understanding of the medical device attributes (e.g., porosity, fibre alignment, stiffness), tissue regenerative cellular functionalities, and tissue remodelling processes will significantly advance the current knowledge-gain, to ultimately benefit the development of next-generation alternative medical devices. In this project, students will gain hands-on experience in 3D Printing modalities, hydrogel/bioink development, cell-encapsulation techniques, self-assembling cellular 3D models, characterisation of cells/materials interactions, morphologic assessment, preclinical evaluation, immunomodulatory assessment, and tissue integration.