Tissue Regenerator
The patented regenerator comprises a plethora of cross-talking sensors and actuators to non-destructively determine the current status/quality of the sample. Since we hold major expertise in muscle biomechatronics, and skeletal muscle still presents a major challenge to tissue engineering approaches, we mount an M. Gastrocnemius medialis between the two motorized pins of the apparatus. Being engineered in line with a force transducer, we can elongate the muscle, record restoration forces and deduce its mechanical compliance, elasticity and overall resistance to strain. This mechanical monitoring and conditioning is complemented by an electric field stimulation allowing to excite twitch or tetanus contractions. A pressure sensor connected to the arterial inlet constantly records vascular pressure and thus, its disintegration and reintegration. Both processes (decellularization and regeneration) are visually supervised by camera and a spectroscope (absorption and transmission), rotating a full 360° around the tissue and delivering angular information about its translucency, morphology and colour metric. In their entity, those sensors make up the sample monitoring unit that we envision to replace end-point assessments of tissue quality, and therefore, will enable to establish an adaptive regeneration process for skeletal muscle tissue.
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