Bone and cartilage Tissue engineering strategies for musculoskeletal tissues, namely:
- Development and characterization of scaffold materials based on biodegradable polymers for tissue engineering applications.
- Cell culturing on biodegradable scaffolds: stem cells sourcing (bone marrow and adipose tissue) and differentiation.
- Dynamic Cell culturing systems (bioreactors) for tissue engineering application: design and use of systems capable of enhancing differentiation and proliferation of stem cells seeded onto 3D scaffolds.
Current main research topics:
- Development of multifunctional scaffolds, associating different materials formats (membranes 3D structures, nanoparticles) and microengineered hydrogels
- Bioreactors design – development of bioreactors for culturing constructs with clinical relevant dimensions and/or to provide specific stimulus and/or systems for on-line monitoring of in vitro functionality
- Periodontal tissue engineering - design of bi-layer and/or injectable scaffolds to achieve simultaneous regeneration of the different tissues involved and stem cell sourcing/differentiation for such applications
- Tendon tissue Engineering – design of specific scaffolds, composed of oriented fiber to enhance tenogenic development of human adipose tissue stem cells (hASCs) and aminiotic fluid stem cells (hAFSCs).
- Magnetic force based tissue engineering approaches for tissue regeneration