For decades, robotic systems have played a pivotal role in nurturing the growth of tissue-engineered constructs in controlled environments through the provision of mechanical stimulation. The importance of physical stresses in tissue maturation is not only intuitive from our own bodily experiences but is also supported by a growing body of mechanotransduction research. However, experimental studies have predominantly remained confined to basic in vitro setups, hampering our ability to produce functional grafts that can translate into clinical practice. Emerging evidence suggests that replicating physiological stresses more faithfully could further enhance the functionality of tissue constructs.
Recent advancements in robotics, including the development of soft robots and biomimetic robots, hold immense promise for pushing the boundaries of tissue engineering. These robotic systems can deliver realistic mechanical stimulation to grafts and implants, potentially expediting their clinical implementation while deepening our insights into biological tissues. In turn, advances in tissue engineering, such as through the development of smart scaffolds, multicellular models and bioreactors, are able to support the generation of biohybrid and biomimetic robots. These bioengineered robots may one day surpass the performance of existing robotic platforms in terms of energy efficiency, compliance, and responsiveness to external stimuli.
Consequently, the convergence of advanced robotics and tissue engineering is becoming increasingly vital. This Special Issue seeks to provide a platform for researchers to share their latest breakthroughs at the intersection of these two applied research domains. Topics encompass a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to:
- Tissue engineering involving robotic components
- Advanced robotics interacting with biological tissues
- Biohybrid robots, biorobotics
- Biomimetic robots
- Bioactuation
- Biosensors
- Bioreactor
- Mechanobiology
- Medical soft robots
- Actuated biomaterials
- Micro and Nanorobotics
Guest Editors
Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy, University of Oxford, UK
Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy is an Associate Professor at the Botnar Institute for Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford. He graduated as a bioengineer from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and completed his DPhil in tissue engineering at the Engineering Science Department in Oxford. He was a recipient of the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, which he carried out at the Rudjer Bosković Institute (Croatia). His research group, established in 2018, focuses on the development of various soft tissue engineering strategies, including biomimetic materials and dynamic bioreactors using advanced robotic systems
Dana Damian, University of Sheffield, UK
Dana D. Damian is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Automatic Control and System Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She received her PhD from the University of Zurich in 2012. She was a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and Carnegie Mellon University (2011/2013). She was a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School before joining University of Sheffield. She leads the Sheffield Biomedical Robotics Laboratory where her group's mission is to develop bionic and implantable devices that show life-like behavior and sustain operation for long-term therapies, in order to advance surgical treatments and regenerative medicine. Her research has been supported by EPSRC, UKRI, MRC and SNSF.
Submission Deadline:
August 31, 2024
Submit Manuscript:
https://www2.cloud.editorialmanager.com/cbsystems/default2.aspx
