High quality drug screening is essential for time and cost-efficient drug discovery and future personalized medicine. Key missing features of commercially available screening solutions are (a) the lack of a human-like 3D tissue microenvironment and the complex organization of multiple cells into organ tissue (organoids) to simulate proper organ function and (b) an understanding of the behaviour of such soft materials. This project contributes to the latter issue by developing a highly reliable method achieving high repeatability in measuring the elastic modulus of a phantom soft material in a 3D printed structure (specifically hydrogel).
StudentSupervisorDr Sue Impey, Dr Saurav Goel, Dr Indrat Aria |
The aim of this research is to develop a measurement system to determine the mechanical properties of 3D printed hydrogel structures using various techniques and compare them for their accuracy and repeatability. There are a number of challenges in investigating hydrogels including the necessity of hydration (wet media) and small sample size (few microns), that compounds further with its visco-elastic (non-linear) properties. Additionally, the dynamic environment that surrounds the tissue and hydrogel structures adds to the complexity of the problem.
The objectives are to review and refine one or more designs for characterising hydrogel and extract useful information on the stress-strain behaviour and deformation data of hydrogel. Aside from this, the aging effect is equally important, for instance the changes in the property behaviour over time will also be examined in sample time intervals. It is important to understand the material well and to confirm if it is functional over a long period without significant changes in properties or to understand and predict the behaviour over the same period. Further characterisation will be conducted with a range of environments and, if possible, a range of configurations for a full proof testing of both hydrogel behaviour and the ideal characterisation method and protocol.