Project R-12219

Combining hybrid hydrogels with peptide conjugation for targeted cartilage tissue engineering. (Research)

Degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis affect millions of people worldwide. Hybrid hydrogels show great promise in tissue engineering applications as scaffolds for supporting native cartilage that is damaged from arthritis. Such gels can be designed and synthesized to be biocompatible and have outstanding mechanical properties, approaching the remarkable behavior associated with native tissue. However, further improvement in function in the sense of promoting tissue regeneration is needed. Previous work has shown that (poly)peptide-polymer conjugates can be tailored to promote cellular interaction. Integrating peptides into hybrid hydrogels in a controlled manner remains a formidable challenge. This is particularly true in gels that exhibit stimuli-responsive behavior (e.g., triggered gelation) and are thus amenable to relevant processing such as injection and 3D bioprinting. All this must be achieved while also maintaining the necessary mechanical properties to support normal tissue function. This project addresses hydrogel design using an adaptable hybrid, dual network synthetic scaffold whereby the building blocks are functionalized for specific attachment to peptides. The mechanical properties will be tuned to match those of native cartilage and the processing and cellular interactions will be probed at the later stages of the Ph.D.

01 September 2021 - 31 October 2022