Adam grant stated that the great shapers
of humanity do not stop in introducing
originality into the world but they
create cultures which unleash
originality in others I am very
passionate about unleashing originality
in my students in my team members and my
fellow academic colleagues we work in an
area which is called regenerative
medicine and our ultimate goal is to
restore function in patients which have
lost their tissue either through an
accident or via a disease in
regenerative medicine there is a great
move to introduce interdisciplinarity in
the research programs as well as in the
scholarships however most of the teams
are rather doing multidisciplinary
research which does not lead to what we
have done in the past moving a bone
tissue engineering concept into the
clinic so what I hope you take away from
this talk is that interdisciplinarity is
not a virtual that if you walk the talk
in interdisciplinarity we can change all
facets of life and not only that but
also what we do and also who we are
unfortunately often interdisciplinarity
is used interchangeably with
multidisciplinary
however they are different by definition
so multidisciplinary means that people
with different disciplines working
together each drawing on their own
discipline and their knowledge however
they do not have a common goal to reach
something whereas interdisciplinary
really means integrating that knowledge
and methods for different disciplines
using a real synthesis of an approach to
achieve something so socio-economical
Studies and business cases show us that
interdisciplinary teams are much more
effective than multidisciplinary teams
however as you all know very similar as
families teams can be working
brilliantly together but it can be also
totally dysfunctional
so what we see often in
multidisciplinary research groups they
still act like silos and they are not
creating an open and social arrangement
in where students and team members can
become the future learners to solve the
big problems of the world neurosciences
teaches us that our perception is not
coming out of the blue it is a result of
processing every day thousands of
so how do we learn interdisciplinarity
so I was very fortunate that during my
time at the National University of
Singapore I was visited by a Singaporean
Technic rep and he did visit my lab and
then he told me and my team
that his vision was to attract the best
expatriate faculty around the world
because he thought that creativity is
not taught but caught so very similarly
we can now argue that
interdisciplinarity to walk the talk
we need role models for me as a young
German undergraduate student I was very
fortunate to be accepted into the lab of
one of the pioneers of a field which is
called
artificial organs which started 40 years
earlier than regenerative medicine
professor William calve he had a large
Institute at the University of Utah and
as I was one of his students working on
my thesis I could observe firsthand how
he would not only compile but also
mental interdisciplinary teams composed
of engineers scientists and surgeons and
what he did is that he showed us
everyday that the team should focus on
critical thinking on process on
solutions and not make the discipline
key so this is also what we do in my lab
activity we are an interdisciplinary
team I also have students which come
with a background of engineering science
and I’ll also have surgeons in my team
so our team has been working very
closely with the surgical team on this
patient case and here you see some of
the team members dr. Marie Villa
Nathan Castro both postdoc in my lab pH
modes and the PhD student Sebastian
egged the worked relentlessly
for two months together with dr. Wiggles
on producing based on the CT imaging and
MRI scans not on only making these
models which shows the defect of the
patient but also designing this patient
specific scaffold and this is a size of
37 centimeters so we use this printer
which you see here to produce the models
as well as different designs of the
scaffold the scaffold is highly porous
however in my lab of course I cannot
produce a scaffold which goes into an
patient for that we needed another team
member which was a company in Singapore
which is a medical device company which
we also communicated on a weekly basis
based on our designs because they have
the certified facility then to 3d print
a scaffold and implant which can go into
a patient did we stop here no based on
this very successful results and we are
very happy to report that Rubin now
after one year has a lot of bone
formation and he’s putting 25% of his
body weight on his operated leg however
we will only know after 2 or 3 years of
full outcome but the very encouraging
results allowed us to treat now more
patients in Germany now we have to
translate our interdisciplinary concept
across the ocean so here you see dr.
Boris Holzapfel
who is an orthopedic surgeon who did a
PhD with me from 2012 to 2050 then he
went back to the biggest orthopedic
hospital
one of the biggest also predict
hospitals in Germany and he also treated
patients last year based on our results
here in Brisbane
so he treated a tumor patient so what
you see here is a large bone tumor which
had to be removed this is a CT scan an
x-ray this is the MRI scan we needed to
regenerate that bone also so one of the
big challenges was of course that Boris
wasn’t present as dr. Wiggles here so we
had to work across the globe why are
Skype whatsapp and sending models back
and forth but another very big challenge
we faced was that the patient
Boris head did weigh 120 kilograms this
is double of the weight of Ruben the
patient we treated here in Brisbane so
that’s a very big biomechanical problem
we had to face in respect to which
design of this metal implant should be
used so again our interdisciplinary team
uses a lot or is called computational
modeling that we can simulate now what’s
happening when we put an implement like
this into the bone into the defect and
the patient would put load on it that
allowed us to find the ideal implant for
the German patient and again as I said
we produced a series of models to plan
the surgery to simulate surgery and here
you see now this is the tumor which is
more than 16 centimetres which has been
removed for this patient right and this
is the outcome now here you see now the
follow-up this is a tumor this is now
the defect which had to be created to
remove the tumor and here you see after
three months there’s already some bone
coming and Boris didn’t use as Michael
vascularized flap he used the bone graft
which also works and here you see now
after 12 months that the bone is further
remodeling but as I said before this
will also take and
the two to three years until it’s
completely remodeled
however this x-rays do not tell us
anything about the functional loading
the patient can put on this operated leg
and here you see now the gait analysis
of the patient and again the patient
weighs more than 120 kilos and you see
him walking here already after three
months all supporting about 20-30
percent of his body weight onto the
operated leg he was back to work after
three to four months but now after
twelve months
you see he’s putting his full body
weight on this operated leg and he is
almost functioning normal again in his
daily life so let me now also bring
another aspect of the 3d printing field
which is called bio printing the
difference between multi and
interdisciplinarity so there are a lot
of bio printing groups around the world
which state that they can print a tissue
or an organ however that is not possible
what we can do is we can print in a bio
ink cells but then these cells have to
multiply they have to produce
extracellular matrix which is a building
block of our tissues and again the wrong
perception is if I would ask you do you
think when you put workers on a
construction site just by putting the
workers there the building would come up
obviously not the workers would need
tools they would need equipment and most
importantly see what needs a time to
build the building and very similar the
3d printing process the printing of
cells is just the start of then over a
long period of time
to have the biology directing now that
the cells produce the tissue so that’s
very important and again only if you
have an interdisciplinary approach where
this biology is included we will be
successful in regenerating tissue one
day in the laboratory so communication
is very important in academia so I hope
what I could show you that an
interdisciplinary approach can not only
change many facets of our life and for
patients but sometimes it can make the
impossible possible
in our case the prevention of the
amputation of the leg of a young father
[Applause] [Music]
of humanity do not stop in introducing
originality into the world but they
create cultures which unleash
originality in others I am very
passionate about unleashing originality
in my students in my team members and my
fellow academic colleagues we work in an
area which is called regenerative
medicine and our ultimate goal is to
restore function in patients which have
lost their tissue either through an
accident or via a disease in
regenerative medicine there is a great
move to introduce interdisciplinarity in
the research programs as well as in the
scholarships however most of the teams
are rather doing multidisciplinary
research which does not lead to what we
have done in the past moving a bone
tissue engineering concept into the
clinic so what I hope you take away from
this talk is that interdisciplinarity is
not a virtual that if you walk the talk
in interdisciplinarity we can change all
facets of life and not only that but
also what we do and also who we are
unfortunately often interdisciplinarity
is used interchangeably with
multidisciplinary
however they are different by definition
so multidisciplinary means that people
with different disciplines working
together each drawing on their own
discipline and their knowledge however
they do not have a common goal to reach
something whereas interdisciplinary
really means integrating that knowledge
and methods for different disciplines
using a real synthesis of an approach to
achieve something so socio-economical
Studies and business cases show us that
interdisciplinary teams are much more
effective than multidisciplinary teams
however as you all know very similar as
families teams can be working
brilliantly together but it can be also
totally dysfunctional
so what we see often in
multidisciplinary research groups they
still act like silos and they are not
creating an open and social arrangement
in where students and team members can
become the future learners to solve the
big problems of the world neurosciences
teaches us that our perception is not
coming out of the blue it is a result of
processing every day thousands of
so how do we learn interdisciplinarity
so I was very fortunate that during my
time at the National University of
Singapore I was visited by a Singaporean
Technic rep and he did visit my lab and
then he told me and my team
that his vision was to attract the best
expatriate faculty around the world
because he thought that creativity is
not taught but caught so very similarly
we can now argue that
interdisciplinarity to walk the talk
we need role models for me as a young
German undergraduate student I was very
fortunate to be accepted into the lab of
one of the pioneers of a field which is
called
artificial organs which started 40 years
earlier than regenerative medicine
professor William calve he had a large
Institute at the University of Utah and
as I was one of his students working on
my thesis I could observe firsthand how
he would not only compile but also
mental interdisciplinary teams composed
of engineers scientists and surgeons and
what he did is that he showed us
everyday that the team should focus on
critical thinking on process on
solutions and not make the discipline
key so this is also what we do in my lab
activity we are an interdisciplinary
team I also have students which come
with a background of engineering science
and I’ll also have surgeons in my team
so our team has been working very
closely with the surgical team on this
patient case and here you see some of
the team members dr. Marie Villa
Nathan Castro both postdoc in my lab pH
modes and the PhD student Sebastian
egged the worked relentlessly
for two months together with dr. Wiggles
on producing based on the CT imaging and
MRI scans not on only making these
models which shows the defect of the
patient but also designing this patient
specific scaffold and this is a size of
37 centimeters so we use this printer
which you see here to produce the models
as well as different designs of the
scaffold the scaffold is highly porous
however in my lab of course I cannot
produce a scaffold which goes into an
patient for that we needed another team
member which was a company in Singapore
which is a medical device company which
we also communicated on a weekly basis
based on our designs because they have
the certified facility then to 3d print
a scaffold and implant which can go into
a patient did we stop here no based on
this very successful results and we are
very happy to report that Rubin now
after one year has a lot of bone
formation and he’s putting 25% of his
body weight on his operated leg however
we will only know after 2 or 3 years of
full outcome but the very encouraging
results allowed us to treat now more
patients in Germany now we have to
translate our interdisciplinary concept
across the ocean so here you see dr.
Boris Holzapfel
who is an orthopedic surgeon who did a
PhD with me from 2012 to 2050 then he
went back to the biggest orthopedic
hospital
one of the biggest also predict
hospitals in Germany and he also treated
patients last year based on our results
here in Brisbane
so he treated a tumor patient so what
you see here is a large bone tumor which
had to be removed this is a CT scan an
x-ray this is the MRI scan we needed to
regenerate that bone also so one of the
big challenges was of course that Boris
wasn’t present as dr. Wiggles here so we
had to work across the globe why are
Skype whatsapp and sending models back
and forth but another very big challenge
we faced was that the patient
Boris head did weigh 120 kilograms this
is double of the weight of Ruben the
patient we treated here in Brisbane so
that’s a very big biomechanical problem
we had to face in respect to which
design of this metal implant should be
used so again our interdisciplinary team
uses a lot or is called computational
modeling that we can simulate now what’s
happening when we put an implement like
this into the bone into the defect and
the patient would put load on it that
allowed us to find the ideal implant for
the German patient and again as I said
we produced a series of models to plan
the surgery to simulate surgery and here
you see now this is the tumor which is
more than 16 centimetres which has been
removed for this patient right and this
is the outcome now here you see now the
follow-up this is a tumor this is now
the defect which had to be created to
remove the tumor and here you see after
three months there’s already some bone
coming and Boris didn’t use as Michael
vascularized flap he used the bone graft
which also works and here you see now
after 12 months that the bone is further
remodeling but as I said before this
will also take and
the two to three years until it’s
completely remodeled
however this x-rays do not tell us
anything about the functional loading
the patient can put on this operated leg
and here you see now the gait analysis
of the patient and again the patient
weighs more than 120 kilos and you see
him walking here already after three
months all supporting about 20-30
percent of his body weight onto the
operated leg he was back to work after
three to four months but now after
twelve months
you see he’s putting his full body
weight on this operated leg and he is
almost functioning normal again in his
daily life so let me now also bring
another aspect of the 3d printing field
which is called bio printing the
difference between multi and
interdisciplinarity so there are a lot
of bio printing groups around the world
which state that they can print a tissue
or an organ however that is not possible
what we can do is we can print in a bio
ink cells but then these cells have to
multiply they have to produce
extracellular matrix which is a building
block of our tissues and again the wrong
perception is if I would ask you do you
think when you put workers on a
construction site just by putting the
workers there the building would come up
obviously not the workers would need
tools they would need equipment and most
importantly see what needs a time to
build the building and very similar the
3d printing process the printing of
cells is just the start of then over a
long period of time
to have the biology directing now that
the cells produce the tissue so that’s
very important and again only if you
have an interdisciplinary approach where
this biology is included we will be
successful in regenerating tissue one
day in the laboratory so communication
is very important in academia so I hope
what I could show you that an
interdisciplinary approach can not only
change many facets of our life and for
patients but sometimes it can make the
impossible possible
in our case the prevention of the
amputation of the leg of a young father
[Applause] [Music]
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