Capturing the biophysical cues of bone to stimulate bone regeneration in critical bone defects

Do you know someone who suffered from a bone defect that had problems to heal? The answer is probably yes since bone is the second most commonly tissue transplanted worldwide and is primarily used in bone defects that are unable to heal. In order to develop a substitute material that guides bone formation and stimulates bone repair without commonly reported side-effects such as pain, infections and an enhanced immune response, this project looks at mimicking bone on three sides (composition, architecture and properties) and two scales (load-bearing scale of the scaffold and the non-load bearing scale of the hydrogels). Dual core-shell 3D-printing will be used to fabricate the scaffold consisting of an osteogenic and an angiogenic filament. Characterisation will be performed to target the incorporation of the bone mimicking biophysical cues into the bone substitute material.