Seminar with Professor Elisabeth Engel

ABSTRACT

CREATING MICROENVIRONMENTS FOR TISSUE REGENERATION

Biomaterials have been used in regenerative medicine for years, but they have been mainly used as scaffolds to support and guide cells or as cell and signaling delivery carriers. Our research has focused in how the biomaterials interact with the host environment. We have determined that no biomaterial is inert and that all of them can affect cell behavior. Understanding how cells interact with the biomaterials and how the degradation products can activate metabolically the cells allows the creation of microenvironments that can induce cell reprograming and activation of stem and progenitor cells. The way how we can translate and transfer the technology into products will have a lot to do in how they are fabricated and how is the interaction with the cells and tissues.

Short BIO

Professor Elisabeth Engel has since2010 been professor at the Technical University of Catalonia. She was appointed principal investigator of the group of Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies at IBEC in September 2012. Her research interests include the preparation and design of materials and scaffolds for in vitro and in vivo fundamental studies, and a further focus is the provision of useful tools to assess mechanisms that govern cell behavior in regenerative medicine. She has published around 80 papers in JRC journals and many invited lectures, and received an award for technological research (Barcelona City Award). Her group conducts several transference and translational projects with pharma and biomedical device industry partners, and participates actively in European projects.