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Renewing Biomedicine with Biopolymers: Engineering nanocellulose hydrogel scaffolds for delivery of bioactive cues in soft tissue engineering

Renewing Biomedicine with Biopolymers: Engineering nanocellulose hydrogel scaffolds for delivery of bioactive cues in soft tissue engineering

Time

1.11.2018–31.10.2020

Project partners

  • Lars Wågberg KTH
  • Funded by

  • Tandem Forest Values
  • Budget

    199 500 euros

    Tissue engineering (TE) scaffold is a promising strategy for treating chronic wounds. Cellulosic nanomaterials are emerging alternative natural polymers well suited for fabricating hydrogel scaffolds for TE strategies. The matrices of engineered scaffolds should provide both physical protection and spatiotemporally controlled bioactive cues for the seeded cells aiming to establish a bidirectional crosstalk between the microenvironments in scaffold and the resident cells. With this truly multidisciplinary research proposal, we aim: ·To specially tailor freeze-linked cellulose nanofibril (CNF) networks to be used in TE strategy and to modify CNF with methacrylate groups via alkoxysilane chemistry in aqueous phase with a focus on tuning the mechanical stiffness of CNF hydrogel ·To increase the biofunctionality to the CNF hydrogels by grafting thermo-responsive polymers onto CNF for controllable release of angiogenic growth factors ·To use woody hemicellulose derivatives as surface wettability modifier as well as molecular anchor of RGD to CNF via physical affinity, for the enhanced cell attachment activity ·To optimize the CNF bioink formulation for successful 3D printing of hydrogel scaffolds via direct ink writing (DIW) The main outcome is an extracellular matrices (ECM)-mimicking hydrogel scaffold made of a CNF matrix constructed via 3D bioprinting, which carries multiple therapeutic functionalities.