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Biogelx: Designer Gels for Cell Culture
Eleanore Irvine, Product Development and QC Scientist, Biogelx Limited
Biogelx Limited is a biomaterials company that designs tuneable peptide hydrogels, offering artificial tissue environments to cell biologists for a range of cell culture applications.
The hydrogels are highly tuneable, cell-matched biomaterials, capable of revolutionising the way cell biologists control and manipulate cell behaviour in the laboratory. This is of direct relevance to fundamental cell research, including the study of stem cells and in the design of improved disease models for in vitro cell-based assays. More recently these materials have received interest for 3D bioprinting applications.
This poster will showcase the underlying chemistry of Biogelx’s peptide hydrogels, highlighting the range of simple chemical and mechanical modifications that can be implemented within the gels, to address a wide range of cell based applications. Some examples of academic and industrial collaborative work shall also be presented, including how the gels tuneable properties, can be used to influence the differentiation pathway of stem cells, and recent work demonstrating their potential as a bio-ink in 3D bioprinting.
Understanding the regeneration of auditory cells to define conditions for the cellular proliferation in the inner ear and to design 3D-bioprinting based strategies
Miriam Gomez, Cell and Molecular Biologist , University College London
Deafness and balance disorders affect 360 million people worldwide1] and are caused by the loss of specialised sensory cells in the inner ear called hair cells. Currently, there is no cure to replace or regenerate sensory inner ear epithelium when damage occurs. It is known that in the mammalian inner ear, the loss of expression of the master gene Atoh12] is linked with a limited capacity to regenerate hair cells3]. However, in non-mammalian vertebrates, ATOH1 expression re-activates spontaneously after damage and new hair cells can be formed throughout life4,5]. Here we report, for the first time, that a family of transcription factors (E2F1-3) have the capacity to up-regulate the chick Atoh1 via direct binding with the novel enhancer in the Atoh1 genome. These findings suggest that the E2F transcription factors are involved in cell cycle re-entry to up-regulate ATOH1 expression in chick and consequently contribute to regenerate inner ear tissue. Since spontaneous cellular regeneration in the human inner ear is limited, the knowledge of critical factors, like the E2F family, can contribute to the design of 3D-bioprinting strategies to incorporate the biological cues to build an inner ear epithelium for clinical applications.
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