Aging Tissue

In the competence team for research, funded by the City of Vienna (MA23), three employees of the FH Technikum Wien will dedicate themselves to the highly topical subject ” Effects of Aging in Tissue Regeneration”.

The main goal of the Competence Team for Research “AgingTissue” is to continue and sustain active research and  high quality teaching in the field of Tissue Engineering at the FH Technikum Wien. The expertise built up in previous projects in the field of mechanical cell stimulation in 3D constructs using a wide variety of bioreactor systems is to be extended in this project to include the influencing factor “aging”. Thus, the already established tissue regeneration models for cardiac/skeletal muscle, nerve and cartilage tissue can be used to investigate age-associated diseases and the cell reactions and molecular mechanisms involved. The tissue regeneration models artificially influenced by aging will subsequently be used to test potential “anti-aging” preparations in specific 3D environments.

The competence team will extend the existing methods for the cultivation of healthy and diseased tissue in bioreactors in order to map the influence of aging on tissue regeneration. Thus, the productive research focus “Tissue Enigneering and Molecular Life Science Technologies” of the FHTW will be continued. Through the close integration of research and teaching, the high quality and topicality of teaching in the field of tissue engineering will be maintained and can be enriched and further developed with newly acquired know-how. The main focus of the teaching activities will be the integration of current contents of the research projects into the practical laboratory exercises of the students of the master program “Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine”. The methodical processing of this content is to be carried out with the aid of adapted concepts of problem-based learning with the help of the project team “Problem-based Learning in Molecular Life Science Technologies and Technical Environmental Management”. The topic of aging shall also be prepared and used across disciplines for other study programs of the Department of Life Science Engineering, since the integration of the research results and the general topic is relevant for education in several departments/study programs of the FHTW. The active research activity of the competence team in the interdisciplinary research field of Tissue Engineering supports and promotes the perception of the FHTW as a possible cooperation partner in national and international research projects. The close coupling and direct connection of research and teaching on the topic of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine also secures the status of the FH Technikum Wien as an educational institution for excellent students in this promising field, in order to train cutting-edge specialists for Viennese companies.