Welcome to the Bioinspired Supramolecular &
Polymeric Materials Group
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Cardiac tissue engineering
The application of conductive polymer based scaffolds as functional biomaterials is still limited due to the lack of coexistence of favourable attributes in a single scaffold, including adequate mechanical properties for culturing soft tissues, self-healing behaviour, conductivity, ECM mimicking structure and sufficient biocompatibility. Our goal is to develop an all-organic, continuous conducting path compared to the non-continuous, point-to-point connected conducting networks of inorganic nanoparticles. Hence, the proposed scaffold could open new avenues for cardiac tissue engineering.
3D Cell culture
Short-peptide or amino acid based hydrogels will be used for 3D cell culture.
Molecular co-assembly
Amyloid formation in supramolecular gels
Supramolecular gels resemble the physiological environment in terms of their water content and fibrous architecture. We will try to investigate the formation of short peptide-based amyloidogenic structures inside supramolecular gels.
Engineering ordered nanostructures through molecular self-assembly of simple building blocks constitutes the essence of modern nanotechnology to develop functional supramolecular biomaterials. However, the lack of adequate chemical and functional diversity often hinders the utilization of unimolecular self-assemblies for practical applications. Co-assembly of two different building blocks can essentially harness both of their attributes and produce nanostructured macro-scale objects with improved physical properties and desired functional complexity.