Synthetic Body Parts

Annalisa and her colleagues at UCL work on using stem cells to repair damaged hearts. They have grown human stem cell-derived heart cells on tiny biodegradable microspheres. Due to their small size, they can be directly injected into the heart muscle using a needle. The cells attach on the microspheres, making connections with other cells, and can beat for up to 40 days in a dish. This technology inspires the next generation of materials to effectively deliver new cells to failing hearts to restore their function. This type of cell therapy could one day cure debilitating heart failure.

Globally 7 million people wear an ocular prosthetic after damage to the eye from trauma, if they are born with a malformed eye or if the eye has been removed for pain or for a tumour. The final fit and appearance has an impact not only on the eye socket, but also is of great psychological significance. In this talk, we will show the kind of reasons requiring such radical surgery, how we currently rehabilitate the socket and our development, over the last 5 years, using technology of a 3D printed ocular prosthetic. This is now in clinical trials at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

I’m a PhD student at the MRC Prion unit. I’ve been investigating changes in gene expression that occur in the brain in response to prion infection. I want to understand brain degeneration; how it starts, how it progresses and how it can be stopped.