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Filtration & fluid control Modelling the flow
Developing medical devices that rely on fluid dynamics can be complex, time-consuming and expensive because of the number of variables involved. An alternative is to use computer modelling, particularly in the early stages of a project as this can reduce the time and cost involved. This comes with challenges, however. Kim Thomas speaks to postdoctoral researcher Connor Verheyen on how he and his colleagues used computational modelling to design granular hydrogels that can be injected into the body to repair tissues.
A
s a PhD student at the Harvard-MIT programme in health sciences and technology, Connor Verheyen was part of a team working on granular hydrogels. These gel- like materials can be injected into the body to heal injured tissues or even to manufacture new tissues. The team was led by Jennifer Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss professor of biologically inspired engineering at Harvard University, and also included Ellen Roche, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and a member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT. Granular hydrogels are formed by densely packing microgels – tiny building blocks or ‘bioblocks’ that can fit together like Lego. “It’s an inherently modular system where you can imagine plugging and playing different building blocks to get these macroscale ensemble materials that have different properties in terms of mechanics, chemical ingredients and so on,” Verheyen, now a postdoctoral
researcher, explains. “The fact that you’ve got all these squishy Lego materials to play with makes it really interesting to think about how you can mix and match these different populations to arrive at a formulation that will do exactly what you want it to do in the body.” As well as modularity, granular hydrogels have another very useful feature. “Compared to these bulk continuous hydrogels they’ve used previously, the fact that they are made up of all these little building blocks means that when you compact them, depending on how tightly you compact them, you can have this really nice, intricately connected pore structure,” says Verheyen. This porosity enables cells and blood vessels a way to access and fill out the scaffolding.
Self-healing properties
Granular hydrogels can act as either a solid or a liquid, meaning it’s possible to create formulations where the hydrogel remains stable in a syringe, but when it’s time
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