On Thursday 5 July 2018, Dr Cathal Kearney, Lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, gave a lecture at the School of Chemical Engineering, which covered an inspiring story of building capabilities in temporally controlled drug delivery from biomaterials.
Dr Cathal Kearney discusses building capabilities in temporally controlled drug delivery from biomaterials
In his lecture, presented to staff and students at the University of Birmingham, Dr Kearney discussed his work developing an understanding – particular from a temporal perspective – of how cells receive information from their environment and how this information flow can be controlled.
Dr Kearney spoke about projects that describe the cross-talk between biomaterials, bioactive factors and cells, with a focus on regenerative medicine applications. He also presented his research on the development of novel systems for on-demand delivery of bioactive factors, drugs, nanoparticles, and cells from biomaterials.
A networking session followed the lecture for a chance to continue the discussion on biomaterial research.
Dr Cathal Kearney joined the RCSI Anatomy Department as a Senior Research Fellow in the Tissue Engineering Research Group in the spring of 2014. His current research focuses on the development of novel systems for on-demand delivery of bioactive factors, drugs, nanoparticles, and cells. These systems are being integrated into tissue engineering scaffolds (e.g., collagen-based scaffolds developed in TERG), as well as being tested as surface coatings on conventional implants. Adapting these systems to elicit a favourable immune response is a second key theme. Initial focus areas for application include diabetic wound healing, revascularization and bone tissue engineering.
