Prof Karin Hing has today been announced as the recipient of the Baxter/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Biomaterials and Tissue Regeneration. She will work with biomedical technology company Baxter to develop traditional and tissue engineering-based strategies for personalised orthobiologic medicine.

Orthobiologic medicine (or orthopaedic regenerative medicine) is the use of synthetic biomaterials and/or organic biomolecules in medical treatments to work synergistically with the body’s native musculoskeletal biological processes, to either relieve symptoms of an orthopaedic condition, or to enhance, and or accelerate the tissue regeneration process.

This work will be centred around tuneable resorbable bioactive biomaterials that can be tailored to produce devices for different clinical applications. Core to this will be the development of robust multipurpose human cell-based tissue bioreactor systems to guide and accelerate biomaterial or therapeutic development, for safety and efficacy validation, and to enable the preloading of biomaterial scaffolds with a patient’s own cells, to efficiently translate regenerative tissue engineering research into a medical setting.

Prof Hing said “I am deeply honoured to have been awarded this Baxter/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair, and excited by the opportunity it brings to work with an interdisciplinary team to translate cutting edge biomedical innovation into clinical reality.”

The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships aim to strengthen the links between industry and academia, supporting academics in UK universities to undertake use-inspired research to meet the needs of industrial sponsors.

The scheme provides awardees with funding of up to £225,000 over five years to support a collaborative research project between the awardee, their industrial sponsor and their host institution.

In addition to direct financial support, awardees also benefit from:

• a reduction in their teaching and administrative duties
• mentoring support from an Academy Fellow
• training, events and networking opportunities
• access to the Academy’s Awardee Excellence Community