Emulsion-templated Porous Polymer

Neil R. Cameron [webpage]

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 

Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia

Amphi Esquillan

ABSTRACT

In the presentation, I will discuss some of our work on the development of highly porous polymeric materials as scaffolds for 3D cell culture, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The materials are produced by a technique known as emulsion templating, which generates porous polymers (polyHIPEs) with a very well-defined and fully interconnected network of pores in the size range 10-100 microns. Features such as the pore diameter, degree of interconnection, porosity, mechanical properties and surface chemistry can be varied to produce materials tailored for different applications. The main focus of the presentation will concern recent work on the development of degradable materials intended for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. These are produced by light-activated thiol-ene network formation, which, due to the speed of cure, can be adapted to 3D printing (stereolithography) platforms. Recent results selected from current projects1-6 focussing on a range of tissue engineering/regenerative medicine applications, including human neural precursor cells, human pluripotent stem cells, hematopoietic stem cells, osteoblastic cells and endometrial cells, will be presented.

REFERENCES

1. A.M. Eissa, F.S.V. Barros, P. Vrljicak, J.J. Brosens, N.R. Cameron, Biomacromolecules, 2018, 19, 3343.

2. J.L. Ratcliffe, M. Walker, A.M. Eissa, S. Du, S.A. Przyborski, A.L. Laslett, N.R. Cameron, J. Polym. Sci. Pt. A: Polym. Chem. 2019, 57, 1974.

3. C.E. Severn, A.M. Eissa, C.R. Langford, A. Parker, M. Walker, J.G.G. Dobbe, G.J. Streekstra, N.R. Cameron, A.M. Toye, Biomaterials, 2019, 225, 119533.

4. A.R. Murphy, J.M. Haynes, A.L. Laslett, N.R. Cameron, C.M. O’Brien, Acta Biomater. 2020, 101, 102.

5. B.A. Dikici, A. Malayeri, C. Sherborne, S. Dikici, T. Paterson, L. Dew, P. Hatton, I. Ortega Asencio, S. MacNeil, C. Langford, N.R. Cameron, F. Claeyssens, Biomacromolecules, 2022, 23, 720.

6. J.P. Hooker, B.J. Parker, E. Wright, T. Junkers, N.R. Cameron, ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 2023, 15, 11141.