Research

The research activities carried out at the Department of Industrial Engineering by the Biomaterials Unit cover the following areas: peptide synthesis, purification and characterization; investigation of structure-activity relationships in biopolymers; maturation process of pro-proteins; design and synthesis of growth/adhesion factors; cellular adhesion processes in biological tissues; biomaterials surface functionalization and characterization; investigation on osteoblastic cell adhesion by total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy; self-assembling peptide scaffolds; biological heart valves treatment; characterization and treatment of animal pericardium for the production of bioprosthetic devices; mechanical heart valve monitoring; design and development of hybrid membrane for the production of hemocompatible pulsatile chambers (Total Artificial Heart project); Wavelet transform analysis of cutaneous microcirculation. Extended relationships are maintained with Prof. N. Seidah, IRCM, Montreal, Canada; Prof. L. Moroni, Institute for technology-inspired Regenerative Medicine, MERLN, Maastricht University,The Netherlands; Prof. Olivier Gallet, ERRMECe (Equipe de Recherche sur les Relations Matice-Extracellulaire/Cellule), Universitè de Cergy Pontoise, Neuville Sur Oise, France; Prof. Lucy Di Silvio, King’s College of London, London, UK; Prof. A.R. Boccaccini, Institute of Biomaterials, department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany; Dr Ion Tcacencu, Center for Oral Biology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; prof. Salvador Borros, Laboratori Ciència dels Materials, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain; prof. Aneta Stefanovska, Department of Physisc, Lancaster University, UK. Several research activities are currently performed in collaboration with the groups belonging to the infrastructure called “Ingegneria Cardiovascolare Strategica – INCAS”, which has been recently established at the University of Padova.