Carlijn Bouten

Carlijn Bouten’s interdisciplinary research is directed towards new engineering approaches to regenerate tissues and organs inside the human body and covers the complete pipeline from basic idea to clinical application. At the fundamental level, her team concentrates on the mechanobiological reciprocity between cells and (synthetic) extracellular matrices, understanding their role in regulating the growth, organization, regeneration, and degeneration of living tissues. The obtained knowledge is used to (re)generate tissues – mainly for the cardiovascular system – using the concepts of in situ tissue engineering. This approach harnesses the immune response to implantedcell-free degradable materials and subsequent tissue remodeling under hemodynamic conditions. Since 2017, prof. Bouten spearheads the national gravitation program ‘Materials-Driven Regeneration’ and in 2022 she received an ERC advanced grant to start the RE-ALIGN program on restoring cardiac structural organization in situ. Just recently, she was awarded the SUMMIT grant for excellent research teams as a co-applicant of the DRIVE-RM program. Next to her research, Bouten serves on professional organizations and boards, including the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development board. She is also an elected member of AcademiaNet for Outstanding Female Scientists and Scholars in Europe, and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Within the HHH project, Bouten and her team concentrate on creating a (living) endocardial lining of the soft robotic heart, that provides a durable stealth function for blood and immune responses.