Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Regenerative medicine is a promising strategy for engineering tissues used in transplant surgeries, creating in vitro models for studying diseases and enabling pharmacology studies. The global regenerative medicine market is gradually expanding. Ideal regenerative medicine solutions must present the biomimicking microenvironment and the appropriate biochemical and biophysical cues to regulate cellular responses. The overarching objective of the CRC in Nanomaterials for Regenerative Medicine is to understand and optimize the microenvironment, with a specific focus on controlling cell-nanostructure interactions, for regenerative medicine applications. While regenerative medicine research has seen explosive growth in the last two decades, there is a critical gap in the field’s understanding of how healthy, aging, and diseased cells interact with the surrounding microenvironment, resulting in alternation or degeneration of the cellular functions and subsequent disease development. As degenerative diseases (e.g., corneal disease) and other health problems prevalent in the aging population (e.g., vascular disease) are growing concerns both globally and in Canada, the need for regenerative medicine solutions is rising exponentially. This CRC program will investigate the modulation of cell behaviors in response to biomaterials, focusing on translational applications of nanostructures in 2D and 3D systems, as well as mechanistic studies of cell-materials interactions. The program will use microfabrication techniques and hydrogel to build biomaterial platforms to recapitulate biomimicking microenvironments. Focusing on regenerative medicine for corneal and vascular tissues, it will apply emerging nanofabrication techniques to develop an extracellular microenvironment-biomimicking platform for three applications, from bench to bedside, to (O1) develop a novel in vitro corneal disease model for studies of Fuchs Endothelial Dystrophy, (O2) develop a biomimicking cell culture platform for corneal endothelial cell therapy, and (O3) develop a biomimicking luminal patterned small diameter vascular graft for long term patency. The long-term objective of the program is to enable the translation of nanopatterning technology in tissue engineering platforms and develop a new fundamental understanding of cell signaling to improve the success of potential interventions. It will also have an economic impact by influencing the design of new biomedical products.