An integrated theoretical-experimental approach to accelerate translational tissue engineering

Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

This is a ‘perspective’ article that offers insight into the role that mathematical modelling can play within tissue engineering.

There is an outstanding need to accelerate the design process and reduce financial costs during the development of new engineered tissues for regenerative medicine, whilst minimizing the required number of animal-based experiments.

We explain that this aim could be achieved through the incorporation of mathematical modelling as a preliminary design tool. We provide examples of how this can be done for tissue-engineered constructs for peripheral nerve repair, which are designed to aid nerve and blood vessel growth and repair after peripheral nerve injury. This motivates the use of modelling as a tool capable of improving and accelerating the design of nerve repair constructs in particular.

We have built a strong collaborative link between experimental researchers at EDI and mathematical modellers in Mechanical Engineering and we now use mathematical modelling to accelerate the design process for developing engineered tissues.  

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