Dr Robert Keatch

Head of Division

Telephone: +44 (0) 1382 384778 [ext. 84778]

Email: r.p.keatch@dundee.ac.uk

Room: Fulton Building H9
Personal website: http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~rpkeatch

Profile

Dr Robert Keatch is the Head of the Division of Mechanical Engineering & Mechatronics at the University of Dundee. He is also the Director of the multi-disciplinary Microengineering and Biomaterial Research Group at the Dundee University Tissue Engineering Centre (DUTEC).

He has built up, over a number of years, extensive expertise in microengineering, fabrication techniques, biomaterials and biomechanics and has applied his research interests to cover a wide range of activities, from designing miniature medical devices to be used in minimal access surgery (MAS), to investigating complex cell behaviour on microfabricated 3D structures.

He has vast experience in the biological applications of microengineering and has provided the platform for collaborative studies with biologists and clinicians to ascertain the effects of the substratum on tissue cell response to cytokines (and other soluble regulatory factors). His research is focussed on developing materials with direct biomedical applications with particular emphasis on the manner by which micro-topological features and bioactive composition modulate cellular responses. Dr Keatch has developed a variety of microengineering and rapid prototyping techniques to construct 3-dimensional matrices with defined microscale features such as interconnected channels and varying porosities.

To support these endeavours, Dr Keatch has been awarded funding from the EPSRC (Physics in Healthcare initiative) and as part of a tri-centre collaborative network (SANDPIT Initiative in Complex Biological Systems) involving Dundee (project coordinator), Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham to study the tissue level control of new blood vessel formation. His studies of mammalian cell interaction with microfabricated extracellular matrices have been very successful, with funding totalling over £2M since 2003.

Leading edge research is also underway to produce a physiologically functional muscle construct from adult skeletal muscle stem cells. This research involves the development of biomaterials which provide a biomechanical interface with the engineered muscle tissue and the biomechanics of soft tissue itself. This collaboration with the Cell Physiology group in the College of Life Sciences has already attracted funding from BBSRC (Engineering and Biological Systems) and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (Translational Medicine Research Centre) in association with Aberdeen University and the University of North Carolina, USA. This research is aimed at producing in-vitro models of functional muscle tissue to replace current animal testing experiments. It will also focus on non-invasive imaging techniques (MRI scanner) to monitor muscle physiology during mechanical loading and will be central to our new Biomechanics facility.