Project description
Next-gen hydrogels for cartilage repair
As Europe’s population ages, the number of people suffering from cartilage injuries continues to grow, surpassing a million cases annually. Effective treatments remain limited, as synthetic hydrogels often struggle with biocompatibility, while natural ones can lack strength or integrate poorly with host tissues. Bacterial contamination is another challenge, making the search for better materials crucial. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the ClickBioGel project addresses this need by developing bio-based hydrogels using collagen, hyaluronic acid, and kappa-carrageenan, harnessing their combined benefits. Through click chemistry, the project ensures selective, high-yield crosslinking under mild conditions. By offering photocrosslinked, 3D-printed, and injectable hydrogels with enhanced mechanical properties, bio-adhesiveness, and antibacterial features, ClickBioGel is advancing cartilage regeneration solutions.
Objective
Cartilage injury afflicts over a million patients annually in Europe and it is a serious problem due to Europe's ageing population. Hydrogels are promising materials for cartilage tissue regeneration in case they are designed accordingly. The use of synthetic materials suffer from biocompatibility and toxicity problems while natural materials can have drawbacks such as low mechanical strength, limited types, insufficient integration with host tissues and easy contamination with bacteria due to high biocompatibility. ClickBioGel aims to fill this gap through fabrication of bio-based hydrogels for cartilage tissue regeneration using a ternary material system composed of collagen, hyaluronic acid and K-carrageenan to advantage from their synergetic effects, and the “Click” chemistry concept, particularly thiol-ene and Diels-Alder reactions, for the selective and high yield chemical crosslinking of the hydrogels under mild reaction conditions. Chitin nanofibrils will be dispersed in the hydrogel precursor for enhancing the mechanical properties as well as antibacterial and bioadhesive characteristics while RGD peptide will be attached on the hydrogels for cell-adhesiveness. The production of the hydrogels will mainly be in three categories as photocrosslinked hydrogels, 3-D printed hydrogels and light-free injectable hydrogels, which will allow the tunability according to the needs. In vitro cell viability, cytotoxicity and chondrogenesis performance of the hydrogels will be evaluated. With the support of my supervisor (Prof Sangermano), his infrastructure at Department of Applied Science and Technology, as well as the interdepartmental biomedical research centre and the multidisciplinary additive manufacturing research centre at Politecnico di Torino, the fellowship will train me on hydrogel synthesis, photocuring, 3D-printing and biological analysis and act as a pilot for my own ERC starting grant to be an independent researcher.
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- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01
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10129 Torino
Italy
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