Scientists convert blood into regenerative material, paving the way for personalized 3D printed implants

Scientists have created a new blood-based ‘biocooperative’ material that has been proven successful in bone repair and is a personalized medicine that can be used as an effective therapy to treat injury and disease. paving the way for regenerated blood products.

Researchers from the School of Pharmacy and Chemical Engineering at the University of Nottingham have created a living material that promotes tissue regeneration using peptide molecules that can guide key processes that occur during tissue’s natural healing. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Most of our body’s tissues have evolved to regenerate tears and fractures with remarkable effectiveness, as long as they are small in size. This healing process is very complex. The initial stage relies on liquid blood forming a solid regenerative hematoma (RH), a rich, living microenvironment composed of key cells, macromolecules, and factors that regulate regeneration.

The research team developed a self-assembly methodology that mixes synthetic peptides with whole blood taken from patients to create a material that leverages key molecules, cells, and mechanisms of natural healing processes. In this way, it became possible to design regenerated materials that could not only mimic natural RH but also enhance its structural and functional properties.

These materials are easy to assemble, manipulate, and even 3D print while maintaining the normal functions of natural RH, including normal platelet behavior, growth factor production, and recruitment of related cells important for healing. You can also. Using this method, the research team showed that the animal’s own blood could be used to successfully repair bones in an animal model.

Álvaro Mata, professor of biomedical engineering and biomaterials in the School of Pharmacy and Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham, who led the study, said: “Scientists have been searching for synthetic approaches to recreate biomedical science for years. We have been considering it,” he said. Natural regeneration environments have proven challenging given their inherent complexity. Here, we took an approach that works with biology rather than recreating it.

“This ‘biocooperative’ approach opens opportunities to develop regenerative materials by harnessing and enhancing the mechanisms of natural healing processes. In other words, our approach is a step-by-step manufacturing step for designing regenerative materials. As such, we aim to use the regeneration mechanisms that we have evolved.

Dr Cosimo Ligorio from the University of Nottingham’s School of Engineering is a co-author of the study. He said: “The potential to easily and safely turn people’s blood into highly regenerative implants is truly exciting. Blood is virtually free and easily available in relatively large quantities from patients.

“Our aim is to establish a toolkit that can be easily accessed and used in the clinical setting to quickly and safely transform a patient’s blood into a rich, accessible, and tunable regenerative implant.”