Dr Farhad Soheilmoghaddam

With an ageing population, maintaining productivity and participation in society as we age represents one of global greatest challenges in the next 50 years. Whilst the prospect of autologous perivascular stem cell-based products for repairing musculoskeletal tissue damage or deficits has tremendous potential for improving the quality of life of Aging societies, this potential will remain largely unrealised if we cannot address their acquisition of early senescence in culture. My research focuses on synthesising novel glycan-binding polymers that can mimic the function of lectins to invoke a perivascular stem cells adhesion, spreading, and expansion in the multipotent state on substrates mechanically matched to the perivascular niche.

In line with my background as a Materials Engineer, I have also been working on fabrication of a robust, reliable and scalable 3D printed scaffold for functional organ replacement using our developing polymer-based bioinks. These novel bioinks that synthesised using our high-throughput, automatable system enables the bioprinting of an individual's 'own' multicellular organ for use in patient-specific drug or biotherapeutic screening discovery, and ultimately functional organ replacement.

I completed my PhD at The University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) under the supervision of Prof. Justin Cooper-White and A/Prof Allison Pettit, in the development of biomimetic multilayered nano-fibrous scaffolds for guided bone regeneration.