Award details

Development of electrospun scaffolds with smart cells for the tissue engineering of skin and oral mucosa

Reference	BB/C50322X/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Sheila MacNeil
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Ian Brook, Professor John Haycock, Dr Shao Mai, Professor Stephen Rimmer, Professor Anthony Ryan, Dr Tao Sun
Institution	University of Sheffield
Department	Materials Science and Engineering
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	514,030
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/02/2005
End date	31/01/2008
Duration	36 months

Abstract

The methodology for taking a small biopsy of skin and expanding cells in the the laboratory to produce sheets of cells for the treatment of patients with extensive burns has been available for almost 20 years. A more challenging requirement is that of producing laboratory constructed material which is equivalent to normal skin which has both an upper epidermal and lower dermal layer. However, this is currently possible on a small scale but there is one major problem which prevents this work being clinically useful to any great extent. To reconstruct skin there is a need for something which is equivalent to the dermal extracellular matrix which is a collagenous structure produced by the cells of the skin. It is this material that is damaged either when patients are extensively burned or when there have been problems of wound healing resulting in scars and contractures of where areas of skin need to be excised, for example following trauma or superficial cancers. Those groups that have made progress in this area and have used naturally derived materials, usually bovine derived collagen or human donor dermis from accredited skin banks. However there are safety issues with both. This project seeks to make a simple entirely synthetic dermal scaffold material which can be reconstituted with the patient's own keratinocytes and fibroblasts (or oral keratinocytes and fibroblasts) to produce clinically useful material. The technology to be used is that of electrospinning of polymeric materials already approved by the Federal Drug Administration for clinical use. A secondary aim is to develop in vitro models of tissue engineered skin and oral mucosa for research and drug testing. Another key problem which this project seeks to overcome is that its currently difficult to ascertain readily how cells within a 3D reconstructed tissue are responding to the conditions of culture or cytotoxic agents. In this programme we intend to develop cells with reporter constructs within them which result in a fluorescence signal which can either be increased or decreased as cells are exposed to metabolic and cytotoxic and inflammatory stresses. Reporter construct cells will be placed within the electrospun scaffolds as valuable tools in the development of tissues for experimental use and in assisting in scale-up of tissues for clinical use. The work will establish a platform capability in the UK in electrospun scaffold production which will benefit not only tissue engineering of soft tissues (as in this project) but will also be relevant to tissue engineering of other tissues. The project seeks to deliver two advances in tissue engineering, the development of a useful and convenient scaffold material that can be readily scaled-up for clinical use, and the development of a non-invasive methodology for detection of cellular responses within 3D tissues.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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