Funding
Medical Research Future Fund 2019
Personalised Pulmonary Valved Conduits: reducing re-operations in CHD
We address the unmet need for a durable, biocompatible right ventricle to pulmonary artery valved tube, used in reconstructive surgery for congenital heart disease. Currently available animal and donated human products fail in just a few years, requiring replacement open heart surgery every 5-10 years. This has patient safety, psychological and financial implications for the individual, family and
health system. Our team of doctors, scientists and engineers is bringing together recent developments in polymer science and computational engineering to build a solution tailored to the individual that will allow the tube to ‘grow’ with the child, maintain good valve function, avoiding reoperation, and improving heart function and quality of life.
ARC Discovery Project 2020
Engineering Processable, Tough Hydrogels with Biological Activity
The project aims to design a new class of tough hydrogels to address issues in engineering complex soft and robust structures. These hydrogels have superior properties compared with current materials as they are biologically active, processable by various manufacturing techniques, elastic and have a capacity for rapid self-recovery that are ideal for soft tissues. Their physical property is tunable by modification of their compositions that enable construction of complex seamless structure such as valved conduit with anistropic property. Expected outcomes of this project include new insights into material design, multi-physics modelling, and multi-material additive manufacturing for broad applications in soft robotics and medical implants.
https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/DP200102164
Kids Heart Research
We also acknowledge the generous support of Kids Heart Research and The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network.
http://www.kidsresearch.org.au/
