3D Bioprinting applications in drug discovery & development

Ferry Melchels is associate professor in the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering at Heriot-Watt University. His main interests lie in polymeric biomaterials for 3D printing, tissue engineering, and drug and vaccine delivery. His work has been published in leading journals, attracting over 10,000 citations over the past 5 years.

In 2019, he received the Patrick Neill Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Mid-Career Investigator Award from the International Society for Biofabrication.

Ferry holds an MSc (2005) in chemical engineering and PhD (2010) in biomaterials from the University of Twente (The Netherlands). He was a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow between two of the pioneering institutes in Biofabrication; Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) and University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands) before starting his PI position in Edinburgh in 2015. Besides home brewing the best beers on the weekend, his future aim is to continue advancing materials-based technology platforms for biomedical applications.

Patricia graduated from Imperial College London in Biomedical Engineering. She is currently pursuing her EngD (Doctorate in engineering) supported by an Industrial Partner at the UCL Biochemical Engineering department, under guidance of Dr Deepak Kalaskar and Dr Ryo Torii. She is interested in studying how osteoarthritic disease models can be bioprinted to improve personalised drug testing and studying of osteoarthritis.  She is developing various computational and laboratory approaches for bioprinting techniques. Her main objective is to develop these osteoarthritis disease models using animal-free materials and using mass scale manufacturing techniques such as 3D bioprinting.