Bioprinting composite hydrogels to accelerate tissue regeneration in scarred vocal folds

The high frequency of vocal fold vibrations, especially in singers and voice professionals may aberrantly change the biomechanical properties of the vocal folds, leading to voice disorders. The slow rate of wound healing due to the limited cell migration is the main problem with current methods of vocal fold treatment. The goal of this project is to investigate the possibility of using bioprinting technology to study cell migration in injectable hydrogels in order to accelerate the wound healing process in human vocal folds. This proposed research project involves various fields of study, including engineering, acoustics, medicine, chemistry, biology, and physics. The multidisciplinarity nature of this project necessitates the expertise of researchers from other fields. More specifically, doing short-term research at a pioneer lab in bioprinting technology, which is equipped with high-resolution bioprinters, will remarkably help me to conduct several cell migration tests using bioprinted patterns. With this aim, Prof. Yu Shrike Zhang, who is the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Engineered Living Systems at Harvard Medical School, accepted to host me for this research project. The outcome of this work will be helpful for my PhD thesis and the results will be culminated in a conference paper.

Faculty Supervisor:

Luc Mongeau

Student:

Partner:

Harvard University

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: