Great strides have been made in the area of hydrogel science since the first hydrogels were described in the 1960s. Hydrogelation occurs in response to a physical or chemical stimulus, such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic field, enzymatic modification, light and others. These three-dimensional networks consisting of mainly water molecules represent a unique class of materials, with many applications including cell therapeutics, cartilage/bone regeneration, sustained drug release and drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, 3D bioprinting and extracellular culture medium (ECM) for cancer cells, stem cells and neuronal cells. ChemBioGels 2021 will feature on-going work in the area of hydrogel science.
Great strides have been made in the area of hydrogel science since the first hydrogels were described in the 1960s. Hydrogelation occurs in response to a physical or chemical stimulus, such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic field, enzymatic modification, light and others. These three-dimensional networks consisting of mainly water molecules represent a unique class of materials, with many applications including cell therapeutics, cartilage/bone regeneration, sustained drug release and drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, 3D bioprinting and extracellular culture medium (ECM) for cancer cells, stem cells and neuronal cells. ChemBioGels 2021 will feature on-going work in the area of hydrogel science.
Great strides have been made in the area of hydrogel science since the first hydrogels were described in the 1960s. Hydrogelation occurs in response to a physical or chemical stimulus, such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic field, enzymatic modification, light and others. These three-dimensional networks consisting of mainly water molecules represent a unique class of materials, with many applications including cell therapeutics, cartilage/bone regeneration, sustained drug release and drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, 3D bioprinting and extracellular culture medium (ECM) for cancer cells, stem cells and neuronal cells. ChemBioGels 2021 will feature on-going work in the area of hydrogel science.
Professor Ehud Gazit
Professor Ehud Gazit
Professor Ana Roque
Designing functional materials using molecular recognition and mimetism
Short Abstract:
Molecular recognition is ubiquitous in Nature and key for life, and it is on the basis of several scientific advances. In our group, we engineer molecular recognition events using biological and chemical tools to develop tunable materials with applications in bioengineering. In this context, the potential of affinity interactions to drive the design of affinity-triggered hydrogels for cell encapsulation and differentiation will be presented. Furthermore, supramolecular assemblies can also be tuned to mimic the sense of smell and develop molecular recognition systems for analytes in the gas phase, which can be used in the context of clinical diagnostics.
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Short CV:
Cecília Roque is an Associate Professor with Habilitation in Bioengineering and head of the Biomolecular Engineering Lab at UCIBIO, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Biotechnology from Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon. Cecília has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge and at the Catholic University of America, a Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK, and at INESC-MN (Lisbon, Portugal). She has been a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (2016, 2011), University of Nantes, France (2011), and University of São Paulo, Brazil (2015-2018).
Cecília´s group is dedicated to the design and discovery of peptidomimetics and to the development of functional materials, which together find applications in Bioseparation, Sensing & Diagnostics. Cecília has been the recipient of several national and international honors and has been recently awarded with a Starting Grant from the European Research Council.