Tissue Engineering

In the field of Tissue Engineering the application of biology and engineering are combined. The central goal is to develop biological replacement materials to substitute injured or damaged human tissue partly or completely and help to regenerate it. The innovative materials should resemble the endogeneos tissues concerning their biological and mechanical characteristics as far as possible to secure optimal integration at the place of transplantation, tissue functionality and longevity.

To produce such materials three prime issues have to be taken into account: living cells (differentiated cells, stem cells, progenitor cells), structuring scaffold materials (synthetical or natural) and various signals (biochemical, mechanical, physicochemical). We currently work on cartilage-based scaffolds (joint cartilage, meniscus, nasal cartilage). To prepare material appropriate for human application, we developed a process to decellularize natural cartilgage and remove all inflammatory components.

We characterize these scaffolds and develop processes or process variants to achieve better integration characteristics into the human organism according to the demand from the clinical practice.