Peripheral Nerve Tissue Engineering and Regeneration

James Phillips is Reader in Regenerative Medicine at University College London (UCL). Prior to this he was a Senior Lecturer in Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering at UCL and Lecturer in Health Sciences at the Open University. He leads an internationally high-profile multidisciplinary research group focussed on nervous system tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. This translational work includes construction of living artificial tissues for regenerative medicine, developing novel cell, drug and gene therapies for neural repair and protection, and construction of advanced 3D co-culture models. Research is underpinned by strong productive UK and international collaborations resulting in numer^40 invited talks and seminars including 10 Keynote lectures at International Conferences. Dr Phillips is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the spinout company Glialign Ltd which supports translational development of nerve repair technologies, and is co-founder and co-Director of the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering which has been established to translate academic neuroscience/engineering discoveries into clinical applications. He is an elected Board Member for the UK Tissue & Cell Engineering Society and the European Society for the Study of Peripheral Nerve Repair and Regeneration as well as being part of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Biomaterials Applications and a member of the Management Board for the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering.


David Hercher is the head of the Neuroregeneration Group at the LBI. He was trained as a molecular biologist and focused early on molecular medicine as well as neuroscience at the University of Vienna. He conducted his thesis on gene therapeutical approaches after root avulsion injuries under supervision of Prof. Hans Lassmann, and is investigating the effects of phenotypical differences after nerve grafting and the influence of shockwave therapy in his ongoing PhD thesis. He has been working for several years at the LBI, overseeing projects ranging from the application of novel silk fibroin based nerve conduits to the development of novel imaging techniques for nervous tissue using µCT. Furthermore he is involved in an ongoing Wings for Life project for shockwave treatment after spinal cord injury. He serves as a reviewer mainly for journals publishing articles in the field of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine and Neuroscience.

Thomas Hausner has a Doctor of Medicine since 1993 and is specialist for General & Visceral Surgery since 2001, specialist for trauma surgery since 2006. Specialisation in hand- and microsurgery. Head of AUVA Trauma Center Lorenz Böhler since 2015. Since 2003 he is working at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology, located at Trauma Center Lorenz Böhler, Co-Director. Field of research: regeneration of peripheral nerves after trauma. Postdoctoral lecture qualification for Trauma surgery since 2015.