Dr Richard A Black
Lecturer in Medical Device Design

UK Centre for Tissue Engineering

Department of Clinical Engineering
University of Liverpool
First Floor, Duncan Building
Daulby Street
LIVERPOOL  L69 3GA

Tel:     +44 151 706 4206
Fax:    +44 151 706 5803
Email:  rablack@liv.ac.uk

Homepage: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~rablack/rab.html

Time-lapse video recording of arterial smooth muscle cells on a polyurethane membrane modified with recombinant peptide.

Dr Black is currently Lecturer in Medical Device Design in the School of Clinical Sciences at Liverpool University. As a Principal Investigator and member of the Steering Committee of UK Centre for Tissue Engineering, he has responsibility for research in the areas of scaffold fabrication, surface modification and mechanical signalling. Together with colleagues at both Universities, he is developing advanced manufacturing technologies to produce biomaterial scaffolds for use in each of the three clinical components of the UKCTE programme, namely Skin/Wound Healing, Cartilage/Intra-vertebral Disc repair, and Vascular Tissue Engineering.

The success of many vascular surgical procedures depends to a large extent on the nature of the flow within the affected blood vessels. An important objective of my research is to establish what flow structures give rise to arterial disease and the complications that cause vascular prostheses to fail following bypass surgery. The role of haemodynamic factors in these processes is of particular interest, and I am presently involved in studies of both blood-biomaterial interactions and vascular cell biology under simulated haemodynamic conditions in vitro. Through the use of computer-aided manufacturing techniques, we aim to provide clinicians with an accurate description of the flow structures present within blood vessels in health and disease, based on medical images such as angiograms and CT scans. The anatomically accurate physical models of the cardiovascular system that we produce will be used to calibrate the latest Doppler ultrasound systems. My research interests also include tissue substitutes made from biomaterial scaffolds that incorporate cells and extracellular matrix proteins, and the bioreactors in which these tissues are formed and preconditioned. The goal of this research is to develop viable, three-dimensional structures that may be used to replace diseased or injured parts of the body.