From Maastricht University –> To Linköping University
During the YERUN Research Mobility stay, I visited the group of Professor Sjöberg at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (Linköping University Hospital) to learn more about the bio-active components that play an essential role in the wound healing process and stem cell differentiation. Furthermore, they have developed an in vitro skin model system that can be used as a screening platform to test the functionality of the wound dressing to reduce animal testing. Most importantly, as they have extensive experience regarding clinical studies, particularly in the field of wound healing, they can be of great help in designing a dressing that is really needed in the clinic.
The two main research lines that I am working on at the moments are cartilage tissue engineering and wound dressing. During the past years, I have been always aware that besides controlling the structure and physical properties of the engineered constructs, it is also essential to incorporate relevant bio-active components in these constructs to either initiate an event (such as differentiation of stem cells) or avoid one (such as inflammation).
One of the most valuable part of my visit was to have a chance to visit many patients with different types of wounds and burns. Since my group is working on the development of a multi-functional wound dressing, it was great to see how different types of dressings are changed and applied to different types of wounds, how a proper dressing is selected for different patients and what kind of dressing is still needed in the clinic which is not in the market yet. This is one of the main project that we are going to collaborate on. The dressing will be designed and fabricated at Maastricht University and the clinical studies can be done at the Linköping University Hospital. Continuous interactions with clinicians at the Linköping University Hospital is indeed required to fabricate a novel dressing that can be clinically tested afterwards.
Samaneh Ghazanfari was awarded one of the 26 Research Mobility Awards of the 1st call for applications that YERUN offered in 2018.
Read more about Sameneh Ghazanfari here.
