HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at London, UK or Virtually from your home or work.

5th Edition of International Conference on Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

September 18-20 | London, UK

September 18 -20, 2025 | London, UK
TERMC 2022

Electroactive polymer-based smart scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Federico Carpi, Speaker at Tissue Engineering Conference
University of Florence, Italy
Title : Electroactive polymer-based smart scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Abstract:

Cellular scaffolds are a critical component of any system for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. So far, poor attention has been focused on scaffolds that can mimic the extracellular matrix not only statically, but also dynamically, especially for tissues that have to experience large variable deformations (e.g. muscular, cardiac and lung tissues). This talk will introduce ElectroActive Polymers (EAPs) as a promising technology in order to provide cellular scaffolds with intrinsic actuation capabilities. EAPs consist of synthetic materials capable of changing dimensions and/or shape in response to an electrical stimulus. They show useful actuation properties, such as sizable active strains and/or stresses, large compliance, low density, low power consumption and ease of processing. Ongoing research in our group will be described, showing soft and electromechanically activated bioreactors with inherent cell stretching functions. They are investigated to deliver controllable mechanical stimuli to cell cultures, in order to regulate their developmental processes. The talk will show how the greatest promise of the proposed technology relies on its high versatility, compact size, low weight and scalability, as well as low cost.

Biography:

Federico Carpi is an Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florence, Department of Industrial Engineering, Florence, Italy. He received from the University of Pisa the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering in 2001, the Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering in 2005 and a second Laurea degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2008. From 2012 to 2016 he has been an Associate Professor (Reader) in Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials at Queen Mary University of London, School of Engineering and Materials Science, UK. Since 2016, he is with the University of Florence, where he leads the ‘SMART – Soft Matter ARtificial muscles and Transducers’ research group (www.smart.unifi.it). His research interests include smart material-based biomedical and bioinspired mechatronic devices, and polymer artificial muscles. His publications include some 70 articles in international journals, 3 edited books and several contributions to books and conferences.

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