Jan Czernuszka

My tutorial teaching at Trinity covers the general areas of mechanical properties plus polymers and ceramics. Within the Department of Materials I lecture on Composites, Ceramics and the Option course on Medical Materials (for which I give classes) as well as supervising practicals.

At the postgraduate level, I supervise work on the mechanical properties of natural materials, with a particular focus on tissue engineering.

My research is based on examining natural systems from a Materials perspective. At the moment, I am particularly focused on tissue engineering and tissue expanders. On the tissue engineering side, my research group design, manufacture and test scaffolds for a range of potential structures within the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular fields, including osteochondral devices and aortic heart valves. In the video clip, you can see an example of one of our scaffolds seeded with heart cells. This is part of our collaborative work with colleagues from Amsterdam, and my research involves numerous collaborations, both with other universities and with companies.

The second aspect of my research is about developing directionally controlled self-expanding tissue expanders with an in-built time delay. The aim is to provide skin for plastic surgeons to treat burns, large wounds and genetic disorders such as cleft palate and syndactyly (where two or more digits are fused together). As part of this work, my group has a major longstanding collaboration with the University of Malaya to treat cross bite (the misalignment of teeth).

I have over 300 publications and a number of patents. I have won a number of awards for my work, including from the Wellcome Trust, the Design Council and ISIS Alpha. I am also the Scientific Director of Oxford Medical Products.

Chen, Q., Bruyneel, A., Carr, C., Czernuszka, J., ‘Trilayer scaffold with cardiosphere-derived cells for heart valve tissue engineering’, Journal of biomedical materials research. Part B, Applied biomaterials 108:3 (April 2020), 729-737

Rahman, M.S., Rana, M.M., Spitzhorn, L-S., Akhtar, N., Hasan, M.Z., Choudhury, N., Fehm, T., Czernuszka, J.T., Adjaye, J., Asaduzzaman, S.M., ‘Fabrication of biocompatible porous scaffolds based on hydroxyapatite/collagen/chitosan composite for restoration of defected maxillofacial mandible bone’, Progress in biomaterials 8:3 (September 2019), 137-154

Nazir, R., Bruyneel, A., Carr, C., Czernuszka, J., ‘Collagen type I and hyaluronic acid based hybrid scaffolds for heart valve tissue engineering’, Biopolymers 110:8 (August 2019), e23278

Kadhum, M., Lee, M-H., Czernuszka, J., Lavy, C.

‘An Analysis of the Mechanical Properties of the Ponseti Method in Clubfoot Treatment’, Applied bionics and biomechanics (2019), 4308462

Wafa, S.N.A., Sim, L.N., Radzi, Z., Yahya, N.A., Kassim, N.H.A., Rahman, M.T., Czernuszka, J.T., Arof, A.K., ‘Water uptake and transport studies in PVP-PMMA hydrogels’, Conference paper (1 January 2019), Materials Today: Proceedings 17, 430-441

Aziz, J., Ahmad, M.F., Rahman, M.T., Yahya, N.A., Czernuszka, J., Radzi, Z., ‘AFM analysis of collagen fibrils in expanded scalp tissue after anisotropic tissue expansion’

International journal of biological macromolecules 107, Pt A (February 2018), 1030-1038