VoluFaTE: Volumetric programming of cells to control the fate and function of engineered tissues

2026-07-22

Engineering living tissues is expected to revolutionize pharmacological screenings, fundamental biological studies, cruelty-free meat production, and engineered organ replacements. Historically, the functional performance of the living cells within engineered tissues is controlled exclusively via chemical (e.g., growth factors or cell binding peptides) or mechanical (e.g., stiffness/stress relaxation) properties of the biomaterial. All these approaches are united in their shared grand limitation: the cell’s (in)ability and (in)sensitivity to any given signal. This imposes strict design constrictions and associates with donor variation, which has hindered clinical translation and commercial valorisation. In recent years, it has become known that cell volume dictates sensitivity and responsivity of cells to their microenvironmental cues. Indeed, pathophysiological microenvironments induce alterations in cell volume, which underpins the aetiology of numerous diseases. Although it is anticipated that controlling cellular volumes thus can program the behavior of engineered tissues, especially when implanted in diseased sites, currently no strategy to realize this in 3D tissues is available. This proposed VoluFaTE project aims to leverage a cutting-edge single-cell microgel technology to overcome this grand challenge by providing the world’s first platform to program cell volume in a scalable, widely-applicable, and translatable manner. Healing of cartilage defects is chosen as a model system.

Netherlands

2026-03-01