Biotextilogy: Applications for research and development

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Embargoed until 2021-08-01
Copyright: Ng, Joanna
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Abstract
A weave of collagen and elastin fibers supports every tissue in the body, with tissue-, age- and health status-specific spatial and temporal fibre distributions. The newly presented concept of biotextilogy refers to the creation of textiles that emulate nature's own. Microscopy Aided Design and ManufacturE (MADAME) describes an advanced manufacturing method by which spatial distributions of tissue structures such as porosity, structural protein fibers, and permeability characteristics can be engineered and manufactured using biotextilogy alone or in combination with additive manufacturing. Periosteum, a hyperelastic soft tissue sheath covering every bone in the body, exhibits stimuli-responsive or smart properties that would confer great benefit if integrated into medical textiles. These benefits include harnessing movement or displacements to deliver pressure gradients, e.g. to oedematous limbs (actuator function) or changing of its own form when strained by neighboring tissues (sensor function). This thesis also applies biotextilogy and MADAME to test textiles created to mimic the natural patterns of collagen and elastin in periosteum. First the mechanical and strain properties of compression sleeves were characterized. The mechanical testing results from this study showed a lack of gradients in textile samples taken along the length of the sleeve, providing a first step to develop more efficacious compression sleeves. MADAME was then applied, first using microscopy to study elastin and collagen in periosteum, then implementing a recursive approach to better incorporate gradients into textile design using elastic and stiffer fibers mimicking elastin and collagen. Textiles demonstrated spatially tuneable mechanical gradients and strain distributions, validating the concept. Once feasibility had been shown, a set of prototype textiles was constructed using different compositions and combinations of sutures as elastin and collagen analogues. Textiles were tested for biocompatibility by seeding with mammalian cells, and observing cell viability and proliferation over 15 days. Sterilization showed significant effects on material stiffness, though results vary across material and sterilisation procedure. Biotextilogy and MADAME provide a platform for a new class of smart materials and products that exhibit advantageous properties in bending, tension and compression, as well as the capacity to harness forces associated with physiological activity to activate the material’s smart properties.
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Author(s)
Ng, Joanna
Supervisor(s)
Knothe Tate, Melissa
Rnjak-Kovacina, Jelena
Kersh, Mariana
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Publication Year
2019
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
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