Research Projects

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most prevalent disorders causing tissue injury to the osteochondral structure of joints. Restoring the functionality of such kinds of tissues remains one of the unmet clinical challenges in regenerative engineering. The conventional clinical treatment has many limitations and disadvantages, such as loss of native functionality, unavailability of suitable autologous graft, donor site morbidity, pre-existing injury to the donor site, donor-host mismatch, and host immune response. While addressing these unmet clinical needs, this project is designed to exploit the longstanding clinical research expertise of PI with Co-PI’s established experiences in additive manufacturing of biomaterials. In particular, this research proposal aims to develop bio-printed osteochondral tissue constructs to substitute injured bone and cartilage with patient-specific architecture, optimum mechanical properties, and biodegradability. This research work, proposed herein, intends to formulate a synthesis protocol for developing a novel family of bioinks comprising double-network hydrogels and functionalised inorganic nanoparticles such as calcium and magnesium phosphate-based bioceramics. The bioinks would be utilised to fabricate an anisotropic gradient architecture mimicking a native osteochondral construct. The expected outcome of this project would validate the hypothesis that desired biomaterial constructs with complex architectural patterns can be successfully printed using the biomaterials loaded with stem cells to maintain their phenotype and functionality. Further, the 3D bioprinted scaffold would be tested on rabbit models to generate clinically relevant outcomes, used to plan human studies. Based on PI’s long expertise in clinical translational research, a pilot human clinical study will be conducted and to analyse clinical outcomes post-operatively.