Project abstract
Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are two promising multidisciplinary areas for improving healthcare technology by offering new therapeutic strategies and innovative biomedical technologies. The use of stem cells associated with a biomaterial as a biocompatible matrix is an important and promising scientific challenge. While biomaterials play a role as scaffolds, they also provide a local environment conducive to the increase and regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation.
The objective of this project is to develop a new generation of self-assembled hydrogels at neutral pH and thus compatible with cell seeding, while guaranteeing physicochemical properties such as resistance to stress and visco-elasticity. The originality of this project concerns the combination of a polysaccharide of natural origin and a synthetic polymer consisting of boronic units in order to create a gelling polymer matrix that could ensure cell viability.
This project combines three teams at the interface of the engineering sciences, chemical sciences and life sciences. The teams of organic chemists and polymerists (CEISAM, Nantes and IMMM, Le Mans) are associated in order to i) synthesize monomers functionalized by boronic units and ii) to elaborate and characterize the synthetic polymer. The chemical properties of the hydrogel arisen from polysaccharides and synthetic polymer will be studied by the RmeS lab (Nantes), as well as the viability of stromal stem cells within this hydrogel.