Bulletin No. 2, 2024

As one of the global pioneers in cartilage tissue engineering, Professor Barbara Chan of CUHK’s School of Biomedical Sciences has been diving deep into tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research for over 25 years. She wants to benefit patients who suffer from tissue dysfunctions by developing safe, effective, personalised tissue engineering and regenerative medicine solutions. Professor Chan’s team strives to bioengineer clinically usable living tissues to replace defective ones. By integrating different technologies, they have developed bioengineered complex tissues such as engineered osteochondral tissue (eOCT) for cartilage regeneration. Her project “Development of Personalised Advanced Therapeutic Products (ATPs)—eOCT for cartilage regeneration therapy” has been funded by the inaugural RAISe+ Scheme. In close collaboration with the orthopaedic team led by Professor Patrick Yung of CU Medicine, Professor Chan is realising her roadmap of eOCT development: from proof of concept to pre-clinical evaluation, from cadaveric studies on surgical implantation to process validation for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), and now conducting first-in-human clinical trials in Prince of Wales Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital. “This is the best era for doing interdisciplinary translational research. Compared with other countries and regions, local scientists have more substantial funding and infrastructural support from the Hong Kong government,” she says. The production process of eOCT 11