Advanced Techniques in Tissue Engineering

🩸The Future of Wound Healing Could Be Magnetic Scientists have created a hybrid material that combines iron oxide nanoparticles with silk proteins, giving us a substance that can be precisely moved by magnetic fields inside the body. Think about that: a material you can steer to a wound site with a magnet—and that then reinforces tissue, delivers medicine, or accelerates repair. It’s the first time we’ve seen magnetically guided biomaterials with this level of biocompatibility and mechanical strength. The implications range from non-invasive surgery to smart regenerative scaffolds that self-assemble in vivo. 🤓 Geek Mode The team chemically conjugated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) to silk fibroin—leveraging the RGD peptide motif to enhance adhesion and cellular interaction. These modified silk-SPIONs maintain the desirable mechanical and biodegradable properties of native silk, while gaining directional control via external magnetic fields. In vitro experiments demonstrated that these magnetized silk fibers can be positioned and aligned on demand, supporting cell adhesion and spreading. This opens new doors for 3D bioprinting, targeted therapy, and dynamic tissue engineering where structure formation is no longer limited by static scaffolds. 💼 Opportunity for VCs Biomaterials is a $100B+ market that’s still waiting for its “programmable” moment. This is it. Magnetically directable materials represent a foundational platform: not just for wound healing, but for drug delivery, implants, and future biohybrid interfaces. Startups in this space could create living bandages, remote-controlled stents, or even bio-robotic repair kits. What CRISPR did for gene editing, magnetic biomaterials could do for precise, in-body healing. 🌍 Humanity-Level Impact Healing, today, is still primitive. We stitch, we patch, we wait. But what if the material did the work for us—moving where it’s needed, forming the right structure, then disappearing once healing is complete? This is the vision: intelligent materials that remove the need for invasive procedures, minimize recovery time, and ultimately let the body heal smarter. A world where wounds close faster, cleaner, and without a surgeon’s hand. 📄 Original study: https://lnkd.in/gJUnccqn #Biomaterials #TissueEngineering #DeepTech #MagneticNanoparticles #VentureCapital #HealingTech

Excited to share our latest work, "#Engineering the #Hierarchical #Porosity of #Granular #Hydrogel #Scaffolds using Porous #Microgels to Improve #Cell Recruitment and #Tissue Integration," published in Advanced Functional Materials! In this study, we tackled a key limitation of granular hydrogel scaffolds (GHS) — limited porosity due to spherical nonporous microgels — by introducing porous microgels fabricated through thermally induced polymer phase separation. This approach resulted in: i) Approximately 170% increase in void fraction compared with nonporous microgel-based GHS; (ii) Preservation of structural stability despite increased porosity; (iii) Significantly higher and more uniform cell infiltration in vitro and in vivo; (iv) Up to ~ 78% increase in cell infiltration in vivo. This work sets the foundation for developing next-generation granular biomaterials with hierarchical porosity, improved cell recruitment, and enhanced tissue integration — paving the way for faster and more effective tissue repair. A big thank you to my incredible team for their outstanding effort! 👉 Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/euJPcnQs #weare #pennstate #chemicalengineering #biomedicalengineering #chemistry #neurosurgery #BSMaL #Biomaterials #TissueEngineering #Hydrogels #RegenerativeMedicine #PorousMaterials

Announcing our latest publication from the #Heilshorn_Biomaterial_Lab! In our new collaborative work, led by brilliant Betty Cai and supervised by Sarah Heilshorn and Sungchul Shin, we developed an integrated fabrication and #endothelialization strategy that directly generates branched, endothelial cell-lined networks using a #diffusion_based, embedded 3D #bioprinting process for the first time. This #innovation not only addresses long-standing challenges in #vascular biofabrication, such as cell uniformity, seeding efficiency, and multi-cell type #patterning but also paves the way for engineering more complex, multi-cellular vasculature. Learn more about how we patterned both #arterial and #venous endothelial cells within a single network to enhance geometric complexity and #phenotypic heterogeneity by reading the full article via the link below: https://lnkd.in/gdcv-hW3 Betty Cai, David Kilian, Julien Roth, Alexis Seymour, Lucia Brunel, Daniel Ramos, @Ricardo J Rios, @Isabella M Szabo, Sean Chryz Iranzo, @Andy Perez, Ram Rao MD PhD, Sungchul Shin, Sarah Heilshorn Stanford University, DTU Health Tech, University of Washington, Seoul National University #Biofabrication #3DBioprinting #TissueEngineering #Bioprinting #VascularEngineering #Endothelialization #Biomaterials #RegenerativeMedicine #BiomedicalEngineering #Innovation #ScientificResearch #CellBiology #VascularNetworks #AdvancedManufacturing #MedicalInnovation #DiffusionBased #EmbeddedBioprinting #MultiCellularSystems #MaterialsEngineering #FutureOfMedicine #Arterial #Venous #ScienceInnovation #HealthcareInnovation #BiomedicalResearch #ScientificPublication

Collagen-based volumetric bioprinting of muscle-connective tissue models? Michael Winkelbauer, Parth Chansoria, and colleagues at ETH Zürich, UC San Diego, and Kinderspital Zürich have developped a library of photoclickable collagen-based bioresins that are compatible with multiple vat #3Dprinting techniques, including Readily3D's #volumetric #bioprinting. As an application, they demonstrate #multimaterial #printing to create intricate #tissue constructs featuring muscle and connective tissue interfaces. As seen in the figure below, their inctricate 3D geometries can feature an interface of fibroblast- and myoblast-laden bioresins. 📷 Readily3D After several days of post-rpint maturation, myoblasts express myosin heavy chain (MyHC) and sarcomeric alpha actinin (SAA), which are characteristics of maturated muscle constructs. See the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/eqD6Xgmf Michael Winkelbauer, Amelia Hasenauer, Dominic Rütsche , Hao Liu, Jakub Janiak, Michael Nguyen, Karen Christman, Marcy Zenobi-Wong , and Parth Chansoria. "Rapid Deep Vat Printing Using Photoclickable Collagen‐Based Bioresins." Advanced Healthcare Materials (2024): 2405105. #TissueEngineering #InVitro #muscle #tendon #collagen #fibroblasts #myoblasts #biomaterials #light Figures adapted from the original work (subpanels put together, scalebars and cell-type labels added for clarity). Coypright: the authors. Distributed under a CC BY 4.0 license https://lnkd.in/e365Whs