Living Matter Engineering and Biofabrication
Bioengineering, Biofabrication, Biomaterials
Research aim
Engineering and materials science help us to understand how stem cells behave. We translate this knowledge to build lab-made 3D tissues for regenerative medicine and personalized disease models.
About us
The function of living tissues and organs is intimately linked to their architecture. In our lab, we are fascinated by how cells interact with this complex environment, communicate with each other, sense and remodel their surroundings, to determine how tissues develop and function, both in healthy and diseased states. In our research, we investigate how to capture this dynamics in vitro to build lab-made, engineered tissues for personalized therapies, disease models and regenerative medicine. To achieve this goal, we develop advanced biofabrication and bioprinting technologies, smart cell-instructive biomaterials and state-of-the-art stem cell technologies.
The lab comprises a multidisciplinary team of scientists, from biologists to biomedical engineers, chemists and physicists from Utrecht University and from the University Medical Center Utrecht. The team, in collaboration with the Malda lab, contributes to and manages the Utrecht Biofabrication facility.