Tissue engineering is an emerging field with the aim of producing ‘artificial’ tissue or organ substitutes that can grow with patients, ultimately providing a permanent solution to damaged tissues or organs. In tissue engineering, tissue scaffolds play a crucial role. A tissue scaffold is a three-dimensional (3D) structure made from biomaterials with a highly interconnected pore network or microstructure that is used to facilitate cell growth and transport of nutrients and wastes while degrading gradually itself. Fabrication of scaffolds has proven to be a challenging task. One important barrier is the inability to fabricate scaffolds with a microstructure and spatially-controlled distribution of cells that mimics the structure and cell organization in native tissues, and with both mechanical and biological properties appropriate for tissue engineering applications. Recently, the speaker’s research group has been very active to carry on research on bio-manufacturing scaffolds for various tissue engineering applications, specifically those in which living cells are added during the fabrication process. In this presentation, the speaker will report their recent work and achievements, and discuss the challenges and the opportunities in this emerging field. The promising of the use synchrotron–based imaging to track scaffold placement and success in living tissue will also be discussed.

 

 

Biosketch:  Dr. Daniel Chen is a Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Harbin Institute of Technology in 1997, and a second Ph.D. degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 2002. His research interests include Bio-Manufacturing and Tissue Engineering Scaffolds, Precision Fluid Manipulation, Mechatronics and Bio-Mechatronics, and Nano-Positioning. His research has been supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).