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Project

Development and use of an integrated in silico – in vitro mesofluidics system for tissue engineering

Tissue Engineering (TE) refers to the branch of medicine that aims to replace or regenerate functional tissue or organs using man-made living implants. As the field is moving towards more complex TE constructs with sophisticated functionalities, there is a lack of dedicated in vitro devices that allow testing the response of the complex construct as a whole, prior to implantation. Additionally, the knowledge accumulated from mechanistic and empirical in vitro and in vivo studies is often underused in the development of novel constructs due to a lack of integration of all the data in a single, in silico, platform. The INSITE project aims to address both challenges by exploiting a new mesofluidics set-up for in vitro testing of TE constructs and by developing dedicated multiscale and multiphysics models that aggregate the available data and use these to design complex constructs. The combination of these in silico and in vitro approaches will lead to an integrated knowledge-rich mesofluidics system that provides an in vivo-like time-varying in vitro environment. A proof of concept will be delivered for complex TE constructs for large bone defects. If successful, the INSITE system will allow for a maximum of relevant in vitro research prior to the in vivo phase, which is highly needed in academia and industry with the increasing ethical (3R), financial and regulatory constraints.

Date:1 Jan 2018 →  31 Dec 2021
Keywords:Tissue Engineering, In vitro, Mesofluidics
Disciplines:Other biological sciences