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The morphology of mouse fibroblast cells growing on a grooved hydroge... |
Jelly thickener could be used to grow human tissue
The food additive gellan gum is normally used to thicken yoghurt or jelly – but Dr Marc in het Panhuis and PhD student Cameron Ferris have shown that it can also be used to mimic the body’s soft tissue.
In a paper published in the prestigious international science journal Soft Matter, the pair showed that ‘hydrogels’ made from the gellan gum could be used as a scaffold for tissue growth.
They also recently appeared on ABC’s New Inventors program to demonstrate how their inventive research has implications for spinal cord repair and growth of artificial organs.
The researchers say, because these hydrogels can be moulded into any particular shape, they are ideal for imitating tissue in the body. They can also be made to conduct electricity through the use of carbon nanotubes – which means they could be used in bionic applications and help with drug delivery.
Another advantage of gellan gum is that it is biodegradable and similar to the materials that make up human beings.
“This means our material has the potential to be used to provide the necessary cues to simulate the growth of healthy cells. We hope our invention is a step towards shortening the queues of people waiting for organ transplants the world over,” Dr in het Panhuis and Mr Ferris said.
Another amazing part of this discovery, is that the research was a part of 22-year-old Cameron’s undergraduate degree.
Although he is now studying a PhD at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, he co-authored the two papers based on research done during his Bachelors degree.
Undergraduate students don’t usually have their research recognised in major journals, but for Cameron this achievement was another one of many that he has reached during his time at UOW.
When graduating last year he received UOW’s highest award – the Chancellor Robert Hope Memorial prize for community service - as well as the University Medal for Science because of his exceptional academic performance in 2008.
Dr in het Panhuis has supervised Cameron during his undergraduate and PhD studies, and was recently awarded a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship for his research that is considered to be of critical national importance.
He is the head of the Soft Materials Group at UOW, the Nanotechnology Degree Co-ordinator and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the Innovation Campus.
Their research was also selected as the inside cover of Soft Matter and featured in Highlights in Chemical Biology, a Royal Society of Chemistry news service that provides an overview of the latest developments in chemical biology.