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Michael Vernon

Research Profile

The current solution for valvular heart disease (VHD) requires replacing the valve with either bioprosthetic or mechanical valves. Despite being the gold standard approach, these solutions are far from ideal, presenting with many complications such as finite durability, the need for lifelong anti-coagulation therapy, and most importantly a lack of ability to grow with the patient.

Michael’s project harnessed the capability of in-situ tissue engineering (TE), where scaffolds are implanted cell-free into the body allowing the human body to carry out endogenous tissue growth and regeneration. This technique has been promising so far and has the potential to address all of the above problems. In addition to this, recent advances in additive manufacturing technology have given rise to melt electro-writing (MEW), a technique capable of fabricating polymer scaffolds with unmatched precision, lending itself strongly to the field of TE.

 

This project aimed to create novel biomimetic TEHVs that replicate the structure and function of native heart valves. To achieve this goal, a combination of the promising aforementioned techniques of in-situ TE, MEW as well as advanced hydrogels were utilised to create a next generation TEHV. This design will subsequently be optimised through a multi-disciplinary approach of in-vitro and in-silico validation, with the aim of ultimately outperforming the current state of the art.

Supervisors

A/Prof Elena De-Juan-Pardo, Adjunct A/Prof Barry Doyle, Prof Petra Mela, Prof Girish Dwivedi, Clin/Prof Shirley Jansen

Contact

Keywords: Tissue Engineering | Melt Electro-Writing | Heart Valves | 3D printing | Computational Fluid Dynamics

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