Biomaterials and technologies for highly biomimetic organ and tissue models
Event details
| Date | 04.05.2022 |
| Hour | 14:00 › 15:00 |
| Speaker |
Prof. Gianluca Ciardelli, Politecnico di Torino, Italy |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract:
Despite its being around for more than 50 years, Tissue Engineering has brought little commercial translation, with only few products having achieved market success. However, the increased understanding of human biology and our capacity to replicate it through sophisticated technologies and tailor-made materials has stimulated optimistic market forecasts.
The design of 3D replicas of living tissues is expected to gain increasing attention considering their potential in personalized medicine and in high-throughput testing of cosmetics, drugs and chemicals, where they contribute to reduce animal experiments. It is worth considering e.g. that ~75% of drugs approved for liver and cardiac pathologies are withdrawn from the market due to safety concerns which were not highlighted in pre-clinical testing. Moreover, bioengineered models represent a more realistic scenario for the testing of implantable devices (e.g., prostheses testing in bone models).
Ad-hoc designed materials are expected to play a strategic role in this arena, since they recapitulate the multicomponent composition and complex architecture of the native extracellular matrix (ECM).
Despite this potential, new biomaterials are still under-exploited: for instance, polyesterurethanes are extremely promising as cardiac patches but their difficult pathway to FDA approval negatively affected their translation.
The talk will focus on novel trends in materials design, functionalization, and processing into biomimetic structures for the development of experimental models that respond to current challenges in the testing and evaluation of chemicals, drugs, and implantable devices.
Bio:
Gianluca Ciardelli has a PhD in Natural Sciences (ETH Zurich). He has been assistant professor (University of Pisa) then Professor at Politecnico di Torino (Full Professor since 2011) and coordinates a group of around 15 researchers in the biomedical polymers field. He has been appointed as Chair of the Conference of the European Society of Biomaterials (2025). He is Editorial Board member for “nanomaterials” and “Journal of Healthcare Engineering”. He has acted as external expert assisting, a.o., REA, ESF, Eurostars. He published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 8 book chapters; 12 patents. H-index is 43 (over 7000 SCOPUS citations).
Despite its being around for more than 50 years, Tissue Engineering has brought little commercial translation, with only few products having achieved market success. However, the increased understanding of human biology and our capacity to replicate it through sophisticated technologies and tailor-made materials has stimulated optimistic market forecasts.
The design of 3D replicas of living tissues is expected to gain increasing attention considering their potential in personalized medicine and in high-throughput testing of cosmetics, drugs and chemicals, where they contribute to reduce animal experiments. It is worth considering e.g. that ~75% of drugs approved for liver and cardiac pathologies are withdrawn from the market due to safety concerns which were not highlighted in pre-clinical testing. Moreover, bioengineered models represent a more realistic scenario for the testing of implantable devices (e.g., prostheses testing in bone models).
Ad-hoc designed materials are expected to play a strategic role in this arena, since they recapitulate the multicomponent composition and complex architecture of the native extracellular matrix (ECM).
Despite this potential, new biomaterials are still under-exploited: for instance, polyesterurethanes are extremely promising as cardiac patches but their difficult pathway to FDA approval negatively affected their translation.
The talk will focus on novel trends in materials design, functionalization, and processing into biomimetic structures for the development of experimental models that respond to current challenges in the testing and evaluation of chemicals, drugs, and implantable devices.
Bio:
Gianluca Ciardelli has a PhD in Natural Sciences (ETH Zurich). He has been assistant professor (University of Pisa) then Professor at Politecnico di Torino (Full Professor since 2011) and coordinates a group of around 15 researchers in the biomedical polymers field. He has been appointed as Chair of the Conference of the European Society of Biomaterials (2025). He is Editorial Board member for “nanomaterials” and “Journal of Healthcare Engineering”. He has acted as external expert assisting, a.o., REA, ESF, Eurostars. He published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 8 book chapters; 12 patents. H-index is 43 (over 7000 SCOPUS citations).
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Institute of Electrical and Micro Engineering (IEM)
Contact
- Prof. Christophe Moser, IEM