Stem cells are notoriously fragile and often die or fail to form tissue when injected into the body. This Hub aims to build protective materials—essentially custom scaffolds—that keep stem cells alive and guide them to repair damaged tissue. The core problem is that delivering living cells as medicines is unreliable; they need the right physical and chemical environment to survive and integrate. The researchers will first design new materials that mimic the natural conditions stem cells need to thrive, then test them with seven disease-specific teams working on Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, bone repair, skin wounds, cartilage damage, oesophageal cancer, and ACL surgery. If the materials work, they could become a standard platform technology used across many future regenerative treatments. This would shift cell therapy from a high-risk experimental procedure to a more predictable, manufacturable medicine. The Hub is also working with UK industry to ensure any successful materials can be scaled into commercial products. The project is applied from the start—it targets specific clinical needs—but the materials themselves are designed to be adaptable, so the fundamental platform could later be repurposed for conditions not yet imagined.
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Regenerative medicine will transform human health over the next 30 years. We have the ability to create new treatments that repair damaged tissues and restore the body to its original health. Our Hub will play a role in the development of these treatments and thereby help to build a strong UK industry that makes a worldwide impact. We are particularly interested in the methods by which these new treatments are administered to patients. It is difficult to deliver a living cell as a medicine because these cells are fragile and will not form tissue if they experience adverse conditions. We will invent methods to deliver cells to the correct part of the body in an optimal state to repair tissue. Our Hub will create new materials and technologies that can be used in a very large number of future medical applications. In the first phase of our work we will design new materials that recreate the opitmal conditions for stem cells to form tissue. Next we will work with 7 teams who are directly involved in translating new scientific breakthroughs into new medicines. These teams will test our materials and help improve their design by initial studies of suitability for use in Parkinson's Disease, liver diseases, bone repair, skin wound regeneration, cartilage repair, treatments of oesophageal cancer and to assist in anterior cruciate ligament operations. We are working with leading UK industry to ensure that our technologies can be taken forward as new products that originate in the UK but treat patients across the World.
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