Dr Onur Bas won the 2018 Carla Patterson Publication Award for the IHBI Injury Prevention and Trauma Management Theme for his publication which was co-authored with Mr Davide D’Angella, Dr Jeremy G. Baldwin, Dr Nathan J. Castro, Dr Felix M. Wunner, Mr Navid T. Saidy, Dr Stefan Kollmannsberger, Prof Alessandro Reali, Prof Ernst Rank, Dr Elena M. De-Juan-Pardo and Distinguished Prof Dietmar W. Hutmacher. This is an excellent example highlighting the power of interdisciplinary research and showing that how an international team including engineers, molecular & cell biologists, material scientist, polymer chemists can work together.
The IHBI Carla Patterson Awards recognises original research journal articles authored by IHBI researchers, which have the potential to improve human health and make a significant impact to health and medical research. The Awards were launched in 2007 in memory of Professor Carla Patterson, who dedicated her life to public health research at QUT.
Dr Bas underlines that developing multifunctional soft biomaterials capable of addressing all the requirements of the complex tissue regeneration process is a multifaceted problem. In order to tackle the current challenges, recent research efforts are increasingly being directed towards biomimetic design concepts that can be translated into soft biomaterials via advanced manufacturing technologies. In this work, the team developed biomimetic composites consisting of a continuous hydrogel matrix and a reinforcing fibrous network that closely resemble native soft biological materials in terms of design, composition, biomechanics as well as physicochemical properties. Specifically, they have 3D printed fibrous networks following the distinct motifs of the collagens found in soft tissues and used them to reinforce a tuneable hydrogel matrix similar to proteoglycans. The publication presents the design and development, mechanical and in vitro characterization, as well as numerical modelling of these novel materials.
This publication also received SAGE Higher Degree Research Publication 2nd Prize 2017 due to its high originality and readability.
You can view the winning publication at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.7b08617 or https://eprints.qut.edu.au/110571/
