Tissue Engineering

Harshad Navsaria PhD

Research field

The expertise of this group is based around the biology of cultured keratinocytes and the application of tissue engineered skin in animal models and clinical patients. This has led on to the development of complex three-dimensional skin models (based on organotypical cultures), which allow the interactions of various cell types with extracellular matrix proteins. He has contributed to the development of novel dermal substitutes for clinical application in burns patients (tissue-engineered skin: Laserskin and Hyalograft), which are now commercially available. Other activities have included the clinical application of cultured keratinocytes in the treatment of chronic and acute (Burns) wounds; development of a porcine chamber model to study skin substitutes, animal and human studies of post-transplantation survival of cultured allogenic keratinocytes and fibroblasts, development of pre-confluent delivery systems for grafting, and transplantation of hair follicles in tissue engineered skin matrices. Other work includes the identification of novel keratin gene mutations associated with skin pathologies (Wellcome Trust) and the roles of mesenchymal signalling molecules in keratinocyte stem cell differentiation (BBSRC)

Key research papers

1 Golder M, Burleigh DE, Belai A, Ghali L, Ashby D, Lunniss PJ, Navsaria HA, Williams NS. Smooth muscle cholinergic denervation hypersensitivity in diverticular disease. 2003. Lancet, 361:1945-51.

2 Navsaria H, Ojeh N, Moiemen N, Griffiths M, Frame J. Re-epithelialisation of full thickness burn from stem cells of hair follicles micrografted into tissue engineered skin. 2004. PRS ;113(3):978-81.

3 Griffiths M, Ojeh N, Livingstone R, Price R, Navsaria H. The length of survival and pathological features of an allogeneic living skin substitute, Apligraf in an acute human wound model. 2004. Tissue Engineering. Jul-Aug;10(7):1180-95.