Skin job

A UK based consortium of academics at Loughborough, Nottingham, Cambridge, Birmingham and Ulster Universities, as well as industrial partners including

(TAP) have won an £8 million award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop automated methods to produce products for use in the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

The products include human skin, bone, stem cells and organs that can be used to repair and replace defective tissues, or which can be used for drug testing and drug delivery.

The four-year remedi (regenerative medicine – a new industry) programme aims to create reproducible, affordable and effective processes for the scaleable production of cells and tissues that are compliant with current and emerging regulatory rules.

To do this, the remedi consortium will analyse existing manufacturing systems and, using emerging sensing and control techniques, will redesign laboratory bench based processes to enable high volume processing of commercially important yet complex human cell types and structures.