Researchers from RMIT University have had a breakthrough in their work on lab-made peptides with natural proteins and polymers to create a 3D ‘hydrogel scaffold’ that could help people with damaged muscles.
The team – in collaboration with St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Deakin University and the Australian National University – has engineered a material that can mimic the structures behind the natural processes of embryonic development to communicate more naturally with stem cells to effectively repair tissues.
Richard Williams, senior lecturer in the School of Engineering at RMIT, said people’s stem cells are at their best during development, where a scaffold drives and organises them to produce the body’s tissues and organs.
But as we grow older, the body gradually loses this ability. During injuries and diseases, the environment breaks down and impedes the healing processes.
“What we’re looking to do is to create artificial scaffolds that can mimic the natural environment of the cells, but in a healthy, pro-repair environment so that when we take delicate regenerative cells and put them into the body, they are supported and directed to go on and form healthy adult tissue,” Williams said.
When muscles are damaged beyond a certain point, they can’t repair themselves. The team is also working on creating structures that can be used to get the body to heal itself with tissue.
In order to help people who are suffering from injuries where their muscles cannot repair themselves, the team has found a way to use the proteins present during embryonic development and embed these within a 3D scaffold to grow the complex fibres that make up healthy muscles.
One of the challenges the team faced in developing the 3D scaffolds was being able to create something that can be easily handled, used and manipulated, and yet retain the abilityto communicate with cells.
Williams said while it will take another three to four years until human trials begin, the process should be simpler than using complex materials because they are natural processes.