Posted on: 30 August 2024

Dr. Josephine Wu, a researcher from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Engineering and the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Early Career Award. This award will enable her to embark on a ground-breaking tissue engineering project that has the potential to revolutionize regenerative medicine.

Dr. Wu has secured €800,000 in funding, which will support her research for the next five years. The project, titled OPTO-BIOPRINTING, aims to develop a novel platform for tissue engineering that could address current limitations in the field.

Tissue engineering is a promising area of research that seeks to create living organ replacements. However, existing methods struggle to replicate the intricate processes that occur during natural physiological development. These processes involve finely tuned spatiotemporal gradients of signalling molecules that guide cellular and tissue development. Without this precision, even the most advanced artificial tissues and organs fall short of the performance and functionality of their natural counterparts.

The OPTO-BIOPRINTING project seeks to overcome these challenges by introducing an innovative approach to tissue engineering. Dr. Wu and her team will work on establishing a platform that enables spatiotemporally guided tissue formation. This approach will leverage the natural process of cellular self-assembly while incorporating multiple layers of regulation. A key component of the project is the development of a method to use light as a trigger for cells to produce specific proteins on demand, precisely where they are needed.

As a proof-of-concept, Dr. Wu will focus on developing a cartilage-bone unit. However, the implications of this research extend far beyond this specific application. The platform has the potential to be adapted for engineering various tissue types, with significant implications for regenerative medicine and disease modelling.

In a statement, Dr. Wu expressed her gratitude for the Wellcome Trust’s support: “I’m immensely grateful for the support of a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award. It represents an important stepping stone in my pathway to independence, and I’m excited to bring together two powerful technologies for patterning tissue complexity and see where it can take the field of tissue engineering.

“Previous funding support from a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship (ADMIRE COFUND) made this award possible, and I’d also like to acknowledge the continued support from friends, colleagues, mentors, and Trinity’s Research Development Office.”

Dr. Wu, who is also a postdoctoral researcher at the AMBER Centre and CRANN institute in Trinity, was photographed in her lab wearing a green top and a gold necklace, her face beaming with excitement for the journey ahead.

The Wellcome Early Career Awards are designed to support researchers at the beginning of their careers who are ready to establish their research identity. The program funds innovative projects that promise to shift understanding in areas related to human life, health, and well-being. By the conclusion of the award period, recipients are expected to be well-prepared to lead independent research programs.

Professor Sinéad Ryan, Dean of Research at Trinity College Dublin, commented on the significance of Dr. Wu’s project: “Organ and tissue transplantation, both live and artificial, can offer improved quality of life for people experiencing a range of medical conditions. Researchers and clinicians are doing crucial work to bridge the gap between the effectiveness of live tissue and its artificial counterparts. Josephine’s project can help narrow that gap, with any leaps forward likely to have positive impacts for many different types of engineered tissues and regenerative therapies.”

Dr. Wu’s research represents a significant step forward in the quest to create more effective and functional artificial tissues, bringing the promise of regenerative medicine closer to reality.