Humanity overcame major challenges when it learned how to make bricks from grains of sand; only then could it construct increasingly sophisticated and complex structures. This vision allowed us to move beyond the nostalgia of the Stone Age and progress toward modern civilization. To revolutionize tissue engineering, we must ultimately learn how to create effective CellBricks in a scalable way and then direct their assembly within the human body, following a “bricks versus sand grains” analogy.

My vision is to realize a paradigm shift: building living tissues from instructed assembly of milimeter-scale modular cell-laden blocks with supramolecular interactions and defined anisotropy (i.e., CellBricks), rather than from randomly seeded cells in suspension format. Exploiting supramolecular chemistry is a strategic tool that I actively pursue to incorporate into my molecular design of the CellBricks. The orthogonal integration of dynamic supramolecular interactions with light-programmable crosslinking chemistries in presence of external mechancial cues such as ultrasound waves enables clinically relevant dynamics, fusion, and adaptability in vivo, overcoming the limitations of both irreversible covalent strategies and inherently fully reversible supramolecular systems to enable more advanced tissue engineering through CellBricks. The incorporation of ice-binding agents adds cryopreservability, enabling long-term storage of CellBricks and their on-demand availability. This property will support scalable clinical translation across multiple formats, including pre-formed constructs such as cardiac patches and injectables. 

This vision is supported by my recently awarded NWO ENW-XS grant on scalable production of CellBricks for transplantable anisotropic engineered muscles.

In Khademhosseini Lab with Yu Shrike Zhang (Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA), as a PhD research scholar I was trained on the synthesis and purification of photocrosslinkable hydrogels such as gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) and microfluidics-enabled light based bioprinting of different tissue models. 

In the Zimmermann Lab (Medical University of Göttingen, Germany), I focused on cardiac tissue co-culture research as a postdoctoral fellow through an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. My research involved 4D bioprinting of cardiac tissues in hydrogels such as collagen, hyaluronic acid methacrylate (HAMA), and a polyurethane based hydrogel (PU-PEGDA), which I synthesized, purified, and characterized at the Ionov Lab (Bayreuth University) as well as the Simeth Lab (Georg August University Göttingen) through my engagement in the Humboldt Network. At Prof. Zimmermann’s spin-off company, Repairon GmbH (Göttingen, Germany), I worked as a process development scientist, gaining experience in the production of GMP-grade cardiac patches derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. The cardiac patches are currently in Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of patients with severe heart failure. This experience led me to identify a key bottleneck in cardiac tissue engineering: most available patch biomaterials rely on only permanent covalent polymerization, which restricts their adaptability, dynamic remodeling capacity, and integration with the native tissue under regeneration. To overcome this challenge, a new generation of adaptive biomaterials will need to be developed for native-like tissue integration using a combination of both permanent covalently crosslinked and non-permanent hydrogen-bonding supramolecular chemistries.

Currently, in the Dankers Lab (TU/e) I am developing supramolecular adhesive cardiac patches for heart repair, in collaboration with Leiden University Medical Center, Maastricht University, University Medical Center Utrecht, and SupraPolix BV. These cardiac patches are designed to deliver drugs directly to damaged heart tissue in a controlled and sustained manner. I develop strategies to integrate supramolecular electrospun membranes with drug-loaded catechol-functionalized ureido-pyrimidinone (UPy) hydrogels to safely adhere to a beating heart tissue and release antifibrotic drugs, helping to prevent scar progression after a heart attack. The patch is optimized for application in mouse heart and engineered human myocardium (EHM) models. I study how the mechanical and biological properties in a catechol-functionalized supramolecular adhesive affects the patch function to create effective treatments for patients with severe heart failure, reducing the drug side effects by their targeted delivery only to the site of injury.

To complement these approaches, I am now exploring new molecular designs that can combine supramolecular chemistry (my recent focus) and photo-programmable chemistry (my background) to advance the CellBricks vision, aiming to develop clinically scalable and cryopreservable engineered tissues for cardiac, skin, and skeletal muscle regeneration.