Internships – Amino acids, heterocycles, peptides & proteins team
Development of a new photocrosslinking chemistry for Bioprinting
Period: 6 months from January/February to June/July 2025
Internship supervisor: Dr Cécile Echalier
Research team: IBMM Peptides www.ibmmpeptide.com
Internship location: IBMM, Pole Chimie Balard, 1919 Route de Mende, Montpellier, France.
Summary
This Master’s research project at the interface between organic chemistry, photochemistry, inorganic chemistry and biology, aims to develop a new photocrosslinking chemistry for 3D printing scaffolds with applications in tissue engineering.
Organ transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with chronic organ failure. Over 150 000 patients are registered on waiting lists in Europe. The major bottleneck to organ transplantation is the shortage of organ donors. Tissue engineering aims to address this shortage by producing artificial living tissues. 3D printing technologies have boosted progress in the field by enabling the fabrication of complex engineered tissues. Nevertheless, printed scaffolds cannot faithfully recapitulate the spatial heterogeneity and detailed architecture of human tissues yet. With this project, we aim to develop a new chemistry that will enable the light-assisted fabrication of heterogeneous living constructs at the resolution of a single cell.
The team
The Peptides team of IBMM (www.ibmmpeptide.com) is specialized in the synthesis of bioinspired building blocks and their polymerization by mild sol-gel chemistry to obtain bioactive hydrogels mimicking the composition of the native extracellular matrix. These hydrogels are currently evaluated for osteoarthritis treatment and spinal cord repair. With this project, we aim to go further in the field of tissue engineering by mimicking not only the chemical composition of native human tissues but also their 3D architecture.
Student work
The Master student will carry out the synthesis, purification and characterization of photoactivable molecules that will be used as bioink components for 3D printing. This will involve multistep organic synthesis, polymer functionalization, photocrosslinking, characterization by NMR, LC/MS, UV-Vis.
Required skills and soft skills
- Organic synthesis and analytical chemistry.
- Knowledge of photochemistry or photophysical characterization will be appreciated.
- Autonomy, project management
- Rigor and commitment to work
- Scientific curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving
- Good interpersonal skills, ability to report and communicate with supervisors and team members
