Scientists are developing new scaffolding technology which could be used to grow tissues such as skin, nerves and cartilage using 3D spaghetti-like structures. Their research is highlighted in the latest issue of Business, the quarterly highlights magazine of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The new structures are being developed by scientists from the University of Bristol, using proteins from alpha helices – one of the fundamental ways that strings of amino acids fold - to create long fibres called hydrogelating self assembling fibres (hSAFs), or hydrogels. By learning how to build hSAFs from scratch, the researchers are starting to understand how they might use these 3D scaffolds to support the growth of nerves, blood vessels and cartilage tailored to the needs of individual patients. Professor Dek Woolfson who is leading the work, explains: "To make hydrogels you need something long and thin that will interact with copies of itself and form meshes, but is also water soluble. However rather than using natural proteins, which are complex, we've tried to make something as simple as possible that we fully understand using peptides and self assembling proteins." Currently, hydrogel scaffold structures, made either synthetically or from natural resources such as seaweed, are used in everyday products from shampoos to drug capsules.
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