Focus
The ongoing research efforts of our unit are focused on three main areas:
- Stem cell research; Stem cell research plays an important role in regenerative medicine. In every human, millions of stem cells are residing. Our body is making use of stem cells to repair itself. These cells can be harvested from different sources such as blood, fat, bone marrow and dental pulp. As scientists and clinicians, we are working together in developing and refining the ability of isolating stem cells to be successfully injected into patients for repair of diseased or damaged tissue.
- Bone Tissue engineering; We are concerned with creating implantable biodegradable 3D bone scaffolds seeded with stem cells for critical bone defects that cannot heal on their own. Osteosarcoma patients usually go through surgery forming large bone defects that are usually replaced with prosthetic limbs. These types of prosthetic limbs need to be replaced from time to time which make it impractical and causes the patients to go through a series of secondary painful surgeries throughout his/her life. Therefore, we are in demand of novel practical solutions like tissue engineering.
- Osteosarcoma and cancer stem cell-targeted therapy; cancer therapies employing stem cells and its extracellular vesicles such as exosomes as nanoparticle carriers are showing promising results in the cancer treatment. Homing characteristics of stem cells towards the primary and metastatic tumour cells caused it to be used as a novel delivery platform. Currently efforts are being made to engineer stem cells and its exosomes to stably express different cytotoxic agents, which enhances primary therapeutic efficiencies and relieves treatments' side effects.