Research Scientist, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Instructor, Harvard-MIT Health Science & Technology
3D bioprinting: A new approach to healing muscle trauma
Tissue engineering has emerged as a promising way to create 3-D tissue for patients who have lost muscle through traumatic injuries. However, developing muscle tissue that functions as real muscle remains a challenge. Shin and her team have addressed this obstacle by introducing an entirely new approach: bioprinting. Through bioprinting, the team creates 3-D muscle tissue that contains blood vessels and mimics living cells. This advanced technology has the potential to create significant economic savings by treating muscle trauma without requiring muscle organ donors.
Su-Ryon Shin, PhD, received a doctoral degree from Hanyang University, South Korea. In 2010, she joined the staff at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Medicine. Shin was promoted to instructor at HMS in 2014 and is affiliated with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Shin’s interdisciplinary approach has earned her a growing international reputation for her work in nanomaterials science, regenerative medicine, and biomedical engineering. Her research focuses on developing micro- and nano-scale technologies to control and monitor cellular behavior, with particular emphasis on developing micro-scale biomaterials and engineering systems for biomedical applications. Her recent work focuses on multifunctional cardiac scaffolds and 3-D biohybrid actuators using biocompatible hydrogel for both therapeutic purposes and in vitro studies. Her team is currently developing a bioprinting technology to control cellular behavior and regulate cell alignment within engineered systems.