Photodegradable hydrogels for tissue engineering applications

This thesis has developed new light sensitive, photodegradable hydrogel materials and their applications in recreating biological tissues from cells. It has introduced photodegradable, gelatin based hydrogels as biomaterial matrices, showing improved organisation and beating characteristics on cultured heart muscle cells. The hydrogels also demonstrated simple, light activated protocols culture and harvest cells expanded in 2D and 3D. The thesis adds utility and flexibility to photodegradable hydrogel materials, as well as enabling useful engineering controls to create ideal, dynamic conditions for optimised tissue regeneration.