Biological Making Workshop 2023

The Making Lab is organising the 7th Biological Making Workshop on 30th October 2023.

This workshop will bring together people, ideas and activities surrounding biological making, from both the Crick, its partner universities, and the wider research community.

We will focus on innovative engineering devices for biomedical research and discuss future development. This includes, but is not limited to, microfluidics and biomaterials, bioprinting, electronics, optics, mechanics, macro and micro manufacturing.

This year it will be a hybrid event, followed by an in-person networking event for participants on-site.

Keynote - Professor Julian Jones

Julian is Professor of Biomaterials and Associate Head of Department for Research at Imperial College London. His research interests are in biomaterials for regenerative medicine, particularly Bioglass related materials. His team's work on inorganic/ organic hybrids has produced tough and flexible bioactive scaffolds suitable for tissue engineering applications.

3D printed Bouncy Bioglass for articular cartilage regeneration

There is unmet clinical need for scaffolds that can regenerate torn cartilage, as it does not regenerate itself due to lack of progenitor cells. Current surgical techniques, such as microfracture, can provoke some cartilage repair through the liberation of stem cells from the bone marrow, but the quality of the cartilage is low, due to lack of guidance of the cells. often requiring revision surgery and leading to early onset arthritis.

We have developed a new device that can be used with microfracture but acts as a temporary template (scaffold) for the cells, promoting high quality cartilage regeneration in a sheep model. The following combination of parameters were critical to its success: printing the correct pore channel size (for cell-cell interactions); the correct material for correct surface chemistry, biodegradation rate and mechanical properties. We have developed a unique material called “Bouncy Bioglass” that achieves this.

When our scaffolds had a pore size of ~ 250 um, they guide bone marrow stem cells down a chondrogenic route, producing articular cartilage-like matrix, rich in Collagen II, Aggrecan and GAG. Histology from in vivo sheep studies showed similar results, wherein scaffolds with 250 um pores showed excellent cartilage regeneration after 3 months, while defects remained when scaffolds with 500 um pores were used. Matching mechanical properties to host cartilage are important for the health of the joint and for transmitting the correct biomechanical signals to those stem cells that have infiltrated the scaffold. Next steps are technology transfer to clinical use.

Schedule:

13:30-Introduction by Albane Imbert, head of the Making Lab at the Crick

13:35-Michael Winding- Linking brain structure and behaviour with high-throughput video recording devices

13:55- Joachim De Jonghe - Fluorescence-activated droplet sorting for single-cell RNA-seq applications

14:15-Radoslav Enchev- Title TBC

14:35- Central Saint Martins Ma BioDesign x Making Lab collaboration

14:55-Coffee break and poster session

15:30-Supplier talk by Vision Engineering

15:35-Innovative 3D in vitro platforms by the Making Lab

15:55-Peter Craggs- Imaging of bacterial lawn formation on solid phase media for drug discovery applications

16:15-Keynote Prof. Julian Jones

17:00-Drinks reception and poster session

18:30-Poster prize awarded and event end

If you would like to attend, please register on Eventbrite. Registration will be open up to the beginning of the event.

For any information, please contact albane.imbert@crick.ac.uk or christina.dix@crick.ac.uk

Many thanks to our sponsors for their ongoing generosity-Vision Engineering, Durham Magneto Optics, Henniker Plasma, CellInk and Waters