Dietmar Hutmacher's Biography

Dietmar Hutmacher, Professor, Queensland University of Technology

Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher is Professor and Chair of Regenerative Medicine at the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation of the Queensland University of Technology, where he leads the Regenerative Medicine Group, a multidisciplinary team of researchers including engineers, cell biologists, polymer chemists, clinicians, and veterinary surgeons. He is a biomedical engineer who is one of very few academics in the field of biomaterials/tissue engineering to have taken a research programme from fundamental research through to clinical application utilising research in-vitro, in-vivo, preclinical large animal studies and clinical trials. His work on scaffold design and fabrication via 3D printing has created a number of new research directions and has resulted in thousands of subsequent papers, making this process one of the most commonly used in the field today. Prof. Hutmacher’s contributions in this area are visionary, highly acknowledged and of utmost importance to both basic and translational science. He has also pioneered a number of scaffolding approaches to engineer bone, cartilage, skin and breast tissue engineering. As a result of this unique combination of expertise and experience, he is one of the few academics to take a holistic bone-engineering concept from fundamental research to clinical application. Prof Hutmacher has recently pioneered a highly innovative way of using tissue engineering technologies developed in his lab for cancer research. He is leading an emerging area of research in which tumours are engineered in vitro with physiological properties that can be used to study cancer biology in a highly controlled manner or test the efficacy of new drugs or drug delivery methods. Of particular interest is his research on engineering humanized mice models that are better predictors of human response to drugs relative to traditional animal models. His work in this area promises to change the way cancer is treated, opening up new opportunities in the area of personalized medicine. He has performed much of the leading work in this area and was the first biomedical engineer to push this concept, which has subsequently gained global recognition in the research community. Most recently, he and his graduate students have formed a spin-off company BDS, which aims to commercialize a newly developed breast tissue-engineering concept based on biofabrication. Biofabrication is a sub-discipline of 3D printing, or the computer aided design and automated fabrication of tissues and organs. This technique uses the principles of computer aided design (CAD) and additive manufacturing to combine scaffolds, and cells embedded in hydrogels, also defined as biolinks, into a product that can replace a diseased or injured tissue. Prof Hutmacher’s biofabrication group has also more recently developed “in vitro disease models” for drug testing and/or personalized medicine concepts. Prior to his academic career Prof Hutmacher had more than 10 years of experience in the medical device and biotech industry. He has been active in the development of collaborations with the biomedical and biotech industries and has served as a Scientific Advisor for several SME’s companies as well as global corporations and has undertaken numerous research projects with funding from Industry. Currently he is the chair of a number of scientific advisory boards for both large academic research consortia and centres as well for biotech and medical device companies. Over the last decade Professor Hutmacher has gained a worldwide reputation in the field of tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. His preeminent international standing and impact on the field are demonstrated by his publication record (more than 250 journal articles, edited 12 books, 45 book chapters and more then 450 conference abstracts) and citation record (more than 13.000 citations, h-index of 60).