30 years of tissue engineering, what has been achieved?
Daniel Heath spoke to Professor Andrea O’Connor about the development of tissue engineering
Daniel Heath is a Lecturer with University of Melbourne's School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on developing next generation biomaterials. He has specific interest in blood-material interactions, as poor interactions between blood and biomaterials leads to the failure of many medical devices including vascular grafts and stents. His lab hopes to address these challenges by developing new biomaterials with improved blood-material interactions. In many ways, cells are the best producers of biomaterials. Therefore, the Heath Lab also looks at extracellular matrix materials and their applications as biomaterials. Core to this technology is the decellularization of tissue or cell cultures in order to produce extracellular matrix materials that can be used for a variety of applications.