Advanced hybrid materials for bone and cartilage regeneration Event

Tissue Engineering, Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine promise to be able to restore diseased or damaged tissues to their original state and function. Often, a temporary template (scaffold) is needed to guide the cells. If a material has certain properties, it can guide cell pathways without the need for growth factors. Current materials that have regulatory approval as implants do not fulfil the necessary criteria for bone and cartilage applications. This talk will focus on the need for innovation in materials (and device) development for medical applications. In scaffold development, inorganic/ organic hybrids will be discussed, which have interpenetrating networks of organic and inorganic components, that give the unique potential for control of mechanical properties and degradation rate, while being able to guide cell fate. The need for design of new bespoke polymers will be discussed. The future for scaffold production is 3-D printing. Advances in this area will be discussed.