Design and manufacture of an antimicrobial multi-layered scaffold for skin regeneration

thickness skin injuries affect the quality of life of millions of people; they involve the loss of a big amount of tissue and they are normally associated with severe infections, burns or skin cancer surgery. The gold standard treatment is the use of a skin graft (a patch of skin that is normally removed from another area of the patient's body and then attached to the affected area). Autologous skin grafts are not always available and the use of tissue engineered grafts is needed. Tissue engineering approaches are clinically useful but they also have limitations. Current constructs do not deliver cells under the physiological conditions under which skin cell populations normally exist in the living body; therefore, there is a need for delivering new biomaterial devices that reproduce closely the physical space in which cells exist in the native skin.
Here we propose to create a multifunctional hierarchical membrane by combining the precision of additive manufacturing techniques such as microstereolithography, the porosity offered by PolyHIPE materials and the clinical relevance and industrial scale up enabled by electrospinning. The student working on this project will explore the creation of a smart device which will mimic to a certain extent the structure of the native skin. The construct will combine 3 individual functional scaffolds containing (i) A porous layer with defined topography resembling the skin rete ridges at the dermal epithelial junction (which have shown to improve shear resistance, enhance nutrient diffusion and aid in keratinocyte differentiation); this layer will also incorporate antimicrobial agents (including cerium and Aloe Vera derivatives as well as small sugar molecules); (ii) an electrospun nanofibrous pseudo basement membrane to enhance keratinocyte attachment: (iii) a porous under layer equipped with artificial vasculature to ensure blood supply.

There are numerous beneficiaries of this Advanced Biomedical Materials CDT. Firstly and of short term impact are the PhD students themselves. They will receive extensive research specific and professional/transferable skills training throughout the 4 years of the programme. They will have access to state of the art facilties and world leading academics, industry and clinicians. The training and potential placements are designed to maximise the impact of their research in terms of dissemination and movement of their research along the translation pathway.

Longer term benefits are that this distinct cohort will become the future UK Biomedical Materials leaders and be able to use their bespoke training and network within the cohort to collaborate on future worldwide funding opportunities and drive UK research in this area.

UK and international academics will benefit as they will gain the next generation of highly skilled postdoctoral researchers with knowledge and expertise not only in their specific research area but of industry, regulatory and clinical aspects.

UK and international industry will benefit - in the short term they will gain academic based research to further develop products and in the longer term have a pool of highly skilled graduates.

Clinicians will benefit from collaborative research and also the development of new and novel products to enhance the treatment of a variety of trauma and disease based needs from biomaterials.

The public will benefit as end users as patients that will have their quality of life improved from the products developed in the CDT and will be educated in novel technologies and materials to repair the human body. The UK economy will benefit from the reduced healthcare costs associated with the new and improved medical products developed in this CDT and subsequently from the trained graduates. The UK economy will also benefit from the increased revenue from medical sales products from the UK industrial partners we will be working with.

The impact of this CDT will be realised by direct academic, clinical and industrial engagement with the students allowing efficient and state of the at training and fast translation of developing products. Students will also be trained in knowledge exchange and will use these skills to disseminate their research to, and liaise with, the key stakeholders - the academic, industrial, clinical and public sectors. We will ensure widening participation routes are addressed in this CDT in order to include equality and diversity not only in our initial CDT student cohort but in future researcher generations to come.