MERLN's professors Pamela Habibovic and Clemens van Blitterswijk received funding in the prestigious "Zwaartekracht" (Gravity) programme from NWO with their project "Materials-driven regeneration: Regenerating tissue and organ function with intelligent, life-like materials". cBITE plays an important part in the project, focusing on digitizing the biomaterial interface.
The 18.8M euro funding will allow an important boost to the field of Regenerative Medicine. In the project, materials scientists, cell biologists, tissue engineers and medical scientists are jointly working on a new approach in which intelligent materials are used to coax the body into restoring itself. With this multidisciplinary approach, the consortium wants to tackle one of the biggest and costliest challenges of healthcare: the cure of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, and organ diseases such as kidney failure.
Besides Profs. Habibovic and Van Blitterswijk, the team for the program is composed of Prof. C.V.C. Bouten (TU/e, main applicant), Prof. M.C. Verhaar (UMUC), Prof. E.W. Meijer (TU/e), and Prof. J.C. Clevers (Hubrecht).
