Collagen is a nanorod that is the basic building block of virtually every load-bearing tissue. It is extracted in purified form from animal tissues and reconstituted in the lab to be used during surgical repair. For a long time, the strength of reconstituted collagen had the consistency of a gel; therefore, utilization of pure collagen was restricted to non-load bearing applications such a defect fillers. Key differences between the natural collagen (that is load-bearing) and reconstituted collagen (that is not load-bearing) are the packing density and packing order (random vs. aligned). We have discovered that collagen solutions that are subjected to electrical current results in compaction AND alignment of collagen molecules. Studies we have conducted during the past decade elucidated the biophysical mechanisms of electrokinetic mobility of molecules to gain insight to the fundamental science of the electrochemical compaction process. We, then proceeded with development of biomanufacturing modalities to exploit this biophysical phenomenon towards fabrication of highly robust collagen threads that can be woven or filament wound as load-bearing biotextiles. The presentation will also elucidate the effects of the material on stem cells and the performance of aligned collagen biotextiles in the body.
Dr. Akkus, Kent H. Smith professor, received his Ph.D. from CWRU following which he conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Following academic appointments at University of Toledo and Purdue University, he returned to CWRU with primary appointment in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and adjunct appointments in Biomedical Engineering, and Orthopaedics. At CWRU he established Tissue Fabrication and Mechanobiology Laboratory whose focus is the repair and regeneration of tissues by mechanically functional scaffolds and cells. Second research thrust is biomedical Raman spectroscopy for diagnosis of disease in tissue and biofluids. Dr. Akkus is a fellow of ASME and AIMBE.
