Dear All,

You are cordially invited to join the Frontiers in Medical Research Seminar, to be delivered by Prof. Tim Woodfield on October 15, 2025 (Wednesday). The lecture is entitled 'Engineering Cell-instructive Hydrogel Microenvironments for Scalable Biofabrication of Functional Tissues'.

Please find the details as follows:

Date: October 15, 2025 (Wednesday)

Time: 2.30 pm-3.30 pm

Venue: Teaching D Building 105 (TD105)

Speaker: Tim Woodfield

Host: Xiaolin Cui

Abstract

Light-based biofabrication technologies, including extrusion bioprinting, lithography bioprinting (Digital Light Processing, Volumetric Bioprinting) and 3D bioassembly, are enabling new generations of engineered constructs targeting Regenerative Medicine and clinical strategies to repair or regenerate damaged or diseased tissues. Biofabrication is a rapidly advancing and disruptive technology in biology and medicine when used as a tool fabricate and replicate the complex 3D organization of native tissues via automated hierarchical placement of cell-laden bioinks, tissue modules, and/or bioactive factors. Our overall goals are to address major bottlenecks that still remain in designing materials that are both cell-instructive and compatible with high resolution additive manufacturing and 3D biofabrication techniques, and allow for more the development of functional musculoskeletal tissues and Regenerative Medicine strategies.

This presentation discusses alternative strategies to engineer highly tunable hydrogel platforms that 1) promote a specific cell-instructive niche using light-activated crosslinking in gelatin-based bioinks, bioresins and high throughput modular spheroids, and 2) are printable across multiple biofabrication technologies, including extrusion-bioprinting, lithography-bioprinting and microfluidic-based bioprinting. We describe examples where we harness macromolecular chemistry to engineer cell-instructive tissue niches for multiple cell types and biofabrication technologies via: covalent incorporation of thiolated bioactives, nanocomposites, and di-tyrosine cross-linking of unmodified decellularized extracellular matrix (ECM), yielding enhanced chondrogenic, osteogenic differentiation and vascular network formation.

Expanding this approach, we describe further examples applying photocrosslinking to modular 3D bioassembly platforms for probing multicellular spheroid fusion kinetics, extracellular matrix ECM formation, and tissue-tissue integration mechanisms in healthy and diseased microtissues, with specific examples of complex 3D in vitro organoid models for high-throughput screening and osteoarthritis modelling.

Collectively, this work demonstrates the potential if using this cell instructive platform for advancing biofabrication and regenerative medicine towards clinical translation.

About the Speaker

Professor Tim B. F. Woodfield, PhD is Professor of Regenerative Medicine in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery & Musculoskeletal Medicine at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He leads the Christchurch Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering (CReaTE) Group and is Director of the University of Otago Centre for Bioengineering & Translational Health Technologies. His research platform involves development of novel bioinks and bioresins, biofabrication, spheroid bioassembly and additive manufacturing of medical devices applied to regenerative medicine of cartilage and bone, advanced 3D in vitro tissue culture models, and high throughput screening.

Having trained in biomaterials and tissue engineering in North America and Europe, he has more than 170 publications and received a number of awards including a prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the University of Otago Research Gold Medal. He received the 2020 Research Excellence Award from the Australasian Society for Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering (ASBTE), and was awarded Fellow, Biomaterials Science & Engineering (FBSE) in 2020 by the International Union of Societies in Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBSE).

He has been awarded over NZ$28 million in research funding from the Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment, Royal Society of New Zealand, New Zealand Health Research Council, AO Foundation, as well as the European Commission (EU-FP7).

He is the former President of the International Society for Biofabrication (ISBF), former President of the Australasian Society for Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering (ASBTE). He is a member of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society Asia Pacific (TERMIS-AP), an Executive Editorial Board Member for Biofabrication journal as well as Editorial Board Member for Advanced Healthcare Materials, APL Bioengineering.

Please fill in the Registration Form by clicking this link https://www.wjx.cn/vm/OPZEwim.aspx# or scanning the QR Code.

All of you are warmly welcome!