Understanding the Foreign Body Response to Implantable Soft Robotic Medical Devices for the Treatment of Chronic Diseases

<p dir="ltr">Implantable medical devices elicit a process called the Foreign Body Response (FBR),in which a fibrotic capsule develops around the devices. This prevents effective device function, which is of particular importance in drug release. Using actuation (soft robotics) can improve drug delivery, but the effect of actuation on the cells needs further exploration.</p><p dir="ltr">Study 1: Understanding macrophages and the process of NETosis could provide us with a better knowledge of how the FBR progresses to deposit material and form a scar-like Fibrotic Capsule (FC) around the implant using explanted animal tissue (Fig. 1)</p><p dir="ltr">• Looking at Neutrophil Extracellular Trap-released proteins (granule proteins) we can determine that NETosis is occurring.</p><p dir="ltr">Study 2:Designing a hydrogel scaffold which would provide support for cells to grow within a 3D matrix would provide amore accurate in-vitro representation of in-vivo growth conditions.</p><p dir="ltr">• Developing test-beds to understand and analyse biocompatibility would provide greater insights into how we test the efficacy of drug-delivery system before implantation.</p><p dir="ltr">• Hyaluronic acid based hydrogel with the addition of collagen would provide structural support in-vitro and allow for cell adhesion and proliferation which would help in the creation of test-beds.</p><p dir="ltr">Poster presented as part of the Crick BioImage Analysis Symposium 2025.</p><p dir="ltr"><i>Permission has been given by authors to upload to Crick Figshare. Copyright remains with the original authors.</i></p>