Today we are highlighting Ayesha Idrees who won prestigious “ESAO-Gold PhD award 2020″ by European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAO) based on her PhD research work. She is anticipated to give an honorary talk at 47Th ESAO congress in September 2021.
Ayesha defended her PhD thesis with “cum laude” in July 2019 at Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy. Her research was based at the laboratory of Dr. Med. Jochen Salber at the University Hospital of the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany and was focussed on “Development of 3D skin model and 3D skin infection model, as advanced testing tools for the bio-evaluation of antimicrobial biomaterials for wound healing” as follows:
- Ayesha Idrees, Inge Schmitz, Alice Zoso, Dierk Gruhn, Sandra Pacharra, Siegfried Shah, Gianluca Ciardelli, Richard Viebahn, Valeria Chiono, Jochen Salber. Fundamental in vitro 3D human skin equivalent tool development for assessing biological safety and biocompatibility – towards alternative for animal experiments. 4open. 2021. DOI: 10.1051/fopen/2021001
- Ayesha Idrees, Valeria Chiono, Gianluca Ciardelli, Siegfried Shah, Richard Viebahn, Xiang Zhang, Jochen Salber. Validation of in vitro assays in three-dimensional (3D) human dermal constructs. The International journal of Artificial Organs. 2018. DOI:10.1177/0391398818775519
- Ayesha Idrees, Patrícia Varela, Francesca Ruini, Jeddah Marie Vasquez, Jochen Salber, Udo Greiser, Wenxin Wang, Sean McMahon, Susanna Sartori, Gianluca Ciardelli, Valeria Chiono. Drug-free antibacterial polymers for biomedical applications. Biomedical Science and Engineering Page Press. 2018. DOI: 10.4081/bse.2018.39
Further research articles are under preparation and will be published in the near future.
She further did a detailed 2D vs. 3D comparative bio-evaluation study of most commonly used antibacterial wound dressings in clinics. For this, she employed conventional antibacterial methods and two-dimensional cell culture systems; comparing the thus obtained bio-evaluation results with the ones obtained using 3D skin and 3D skin infection models as advanced tools for in vitro risk and antibacterial properties’ assessment.
She was further involved in in vitro bio-evaluation (antibacterial activity and cytotoxicity) of novel antimicrobial polymeric biomaterials prepared by various partners under the HyMedPoly project intended for treating infected wound healing applications.
Ayesha’s work was previously recognised by European Congress on Alternatives to Animal Testing (EUSAAT) 2019 and Centro 3R (Reduction, Refinement, Replacement) 2019. She won “Young Scientist Award 2019” and “Young Scientist Travel Award 2019” by Centro 3R and EUSAAT respectively.
Ayesha looks forward to contributing to the field by introducing the immune components to analyse the immunomodulatory effect as well as replicating the more complex features of skin (e.g., cutaneous appendages). She is also interested to investigate the cellular interaction with different cells and with their environment when the 3D in vitro cell culture system comes in contact with a biomaterial. In parallel, continuing in-depth study of bacterial colonization on the skin infection model would help identifying new targets for antimicrobial strategies.
Ayesha Idrees with her academic supervisor Prof. Valeria Chiono – Politechnico di Torino Italy (left) and her Clinical supervisor Dr. Med. Jochen Salber – University Hospital of the Ruhr-University Bochum Germany (right).