Will Wenmiao Shu is the Hay Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow). He obtained his PhD at the Engineering Department at University of Cambridge. Following his postdoctoral work at Cambridge University, he worked at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences as a lecturer (2007-2012) and a Reader (2012-2016). His research interests cover a range of biomedical engineering topics including 3D biofabrication, medical devices, surgical implants, microsystems and their applications for regenerative medicine and surgery. He held a visiting position at Stanford University in 2011. He serves in the editorial board member for a number of journals including Biofabrication and Bone Research.

Topic title: Biofabrication for Microvasculature and Bioartificial Blood Vessels

Abstract:

Lack of vascularization is a major obstacle to the development of functional artificial tissues and/or organs. Limited by the diffusion distance in biological tissues (i.e. ~100-200 µm), current tissue engineering strategies, such as organoid and organ-on-chip, only allow the construction of functional tissues at sub-millimeter scale which is inadequate to form thicker tissues and scale up for bioengineered organs. Therefore, the in vitro creation of thick, vascularized human tissues (>200 µm) remains one of the moonshot challenges in tissue engineering. In this talk, an innovative approach for high-resolution biofabrication of microvasculature will be discussed. This approach, when combined with the advancement of a novel biofabrication technique for creating bioartificial blood vessels, shows great potential in achieving a completely biofabricated hierarchical vascular network.