On November 19th, our student Doriana Orbanić presented her thesis entitled «MULTIFUNCTIONAL TUNABLE ELASTIN-LIKE RECOMBINAMER-BASED HYDROGELS CUSTOMIZED FOR NEOVASCULARISATION AND DYNAMIC CELL NICHE CONSTRUCTION PURPOSES», developed under the supervision of Prof. José Carlos Rodríguez Cabello and Prof. Matilde Alonso Rodrigo.
The work presented results regarding the development of promising chemically crosslinked hydrogels aimed to be applied for soft tissue regeneration purposes, showing a step forward in the modularity of the system, in comparison to previous studies, and an interesting combination of bioactivities. The biomaterials developed revealed appreciable results in regard to their mechanical features and in in vitro cell culture studies, but also remarkably exhibited outstanding results in in vivo studies. Moreover, a more fundamental study of hybrid silk-elastin like recombinamers has been presented to elucidate more in detail events taking place at a nano- and micro- scale within the system and the possible application of the hydrogels obtained through physical crosslinking for the construction of cell niches. The novel elastin-like recombinamer-based hydrogels presented have exceptional properties and shall be further studied for specific applications.
Well done Doriana! We wish you all the best!
