On Wednesday 21st September, Professor Kamal Mustafa and five members of his University of Bergen research team journeyed from Norway to KTH in Stockholm, Sweden to meet with Professor Michael Malkoch and his researchers. The aim of the meeting with to discuss the ongoing collaboration on the development of a bone scaffold hydrogel in the BoneFix project but also to explore the possibilities of strengthening the collaborations between the two teams. After a full day’s program of presentations, discussions and lab demonstrations it was clear that the two teams can bring complimentary skills in the field of tissue engineering. Some of the topics discussed included KTH’s hydrogels based on dendritic polymers and their tough and rigid light-curable bone fixation composites, and UiB’s many evaluation methods for studying hydrogels designed to accelerate bone regeneration including in vivo rodent calvarial and long-bone defect models and in vitro degradation testing in a bioreactor. KTH also demonstrated the rapid on-demand curing of several of the hydrogels and the bone fixation composite in their laboratory. By combining KTH’s expertise in polymer synthesis and material and UiB’s innovative in vitro and in vivo evaluation techniques, there is great potential for expanding the activities within the BoneFix project and beyond in the exciting field of tissue regenerative materials
