Patricia Dankers is professor in Biomedical Materials & Chemistry at TU/e. She studied chemistry in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her PhD studies in chemistry were performed at TU/e in the group of prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer (2006). She worked for SupraPolix, and the University Medical Center Groningen. Her second PhD thesis work was performed in medical sciences in Groningen (2013). She worked at Northwestern University, Chicago, USA (2010). She is a co-founder of the spin-off companies UPyTher (2020) and VivArt-X (2022).

2024 CME NASA Symposium Abstract

The integration of synthetic components into biological systems will shape the future of regenerative medicine and drug delivery. In nature, tissues and cells are formed by complex, intricated molecular compositions held together by both covalent and directed non-covalent interactions. They can be regarded as complex molecular systems. The formulation of an artificial extracellular matrix from synthetic building blocks that can assemble and disassemble into supramolecular polymers on demand is proposed to lead to complex tissue-inspired materials.