Another PhD from the department!

Manuel Schweikle has publicly defended his doctoral dissertation Characterisation of mineralised synthetic hydrogel scaffolds for bone repair. Department of Biomaterials congratulates Manuel on his great achievement!

Manuel was not let off easy by his very knowledgable evaluation committee members Prof Alvaro Mata and Dr Christophe Drouet.

Thesis summary

New strategies are needed to repair the large number of bone defects that are caused by periodontal and peri-implant diseases. Synthetic hydrogel-amorphous calcium phosphate composites are a promising system for the development of new scaffolds that facilitate bone regeneration in such defects as they represent a bone-like environment that can easily be remodelled into new bone tissue.

The research work presented in Manuel's PhD thesis explored the the formation, structure, and biological performance of a new type of hydrogel-calcium phosphate composites. A substantial set of methods was used to comprehensively characterise the composites in situ and the biological response in vitro. The presented findings demonstrate that highly modular hydrogel-amorphous calcium phosphate composites can be formed in a simple, bio-orthogonal manner and have the potential to serve as osteoinductive scaffolds for the targeted application. This opens new possibilities for the design of novel injectable synthetic bone graft materials.

Les mer om Manuels forskningsprosjekt på norsk.