Insigneo Seminar: Humanoid robots for tissue engineering applications

We are pleased to welcome Professor Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy, Associate Professor at the Botnar Research Centre, University of Oxford, to give a talk on 'Humanoid robots for tissue engineering applications' on 23 June 2025.

 

Mechanical stimulation plays a critical role in the proper maturation of engineered tissue grafts. However, conventional dynamic stimulation is typically achieved using uniaxial platforms, which fail to replicate the complex, multi-axial mechanical environment of the human body, thereby limiting their physiological relevance and functionality. Here, we investigate the feasibility of using humanoid robots to support the in vitro culture of human cells by providing multiaxial mechanical stimulation through motions and forces that closely mimic those of the human body. We compare this approach to traditional uniaxial platforms under equivalent strain conditions. As part of this work, we developed a novel flexible chamber that allows for nutrient perfusion and non-invasive monitoring of cell growth, along with an integrated biocompatible sensor capable of real-time, in situ strain measurements. Our findings demonstrate that mechanical stimulation provided by the humanoid platform significantly enhances cell alignment and induces notable changes in gene and protein expression compared to both static and uniaxial controls. These findings underscore the importance of developing next-generation bioreactor platforms that more accurately replicate human biomechanics, with the potential to improve the fidelity of in vitro tissue models and accelerate clinical translation.

 

Professor Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy is an Associate Professor at the Botnar Research Centre, part of the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS) at the University of Oxford. He graduated as a bioengineer from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) in 2007 and completed his PhD in Tissue Engineering at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, in 2012. Following three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Botnar Research Centre, he undertook a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Croatia. He returned to Oxford in 2016 and established the Soft Tissue Engineering Group, which focuses on the development of innovative biomaterials and advanced bioreactor platforms for musculoskeletal tissue engineering.