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Project

Smart Cellular Scaffolds.

In vivo, cells are supported by an extracellular matrix that specifically dictates the fate of resident cells through chemical, topographical or mechanical stimuli. One of the current challenges in materials and biomedical sciences is to mimic this natural environment, and to make cells feel more at home so that they can heal or replace a damaged tissue or interface with an electronic sensor chip. One potentially successful strategy to address these challenge is to make use of polymer-based cellular replicas and to bring specific cellular features into the engineered scaffold materials. In this project we are proposing to (1) investigate the origin of the strong binding affinity between cells and cell-imprinted surfaces, (2) to mimic the underlying mechanisms with fully synthetic surface patterning approaches, and (3) to employ these cell-imprinted scaffolds in the detection of bacteria and cancer cells. Furthermore (4), we will study the behavior of cells bound to these scaffolds by advanced electronic an thermal methods and (5) analyze their response to stimuli such as temperature, pH, and drugs.
Date:1 Oct 2015 →  30 Sep 2019
Keywords:scaffolds
Disciplines:Atmospheric sciences, Physical geography and environmental geoscience, Atmospheric sciences, challenges and pollution