José Carlos Rodríguez-Cabello

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Valladolid

This study evaluates the microstructure, porosity, mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of Ti-6Al-4V hip implant samples manufactured by Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM), followed by different post-treatments (heat treatment and hot isostatic pressing –HIP–). Hydroxyapatite (HA) coatings were applied to enhanc...

With the degeneration of the intervertebral disc (IVD), the ingrowth of vascular and neural structures occurs. Both nerves and blood vessels engage in the development of inflammation and the onset of discogenic pain. The present study aimed to produce a hierarchical biomaterial capable of inhibiting angiogenesis by emulating the microenvironment of...

Recombinant protein production is crucial for biomedical and industrial applications; however, achieving high yields for complex protein-like biomaterials such as elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs) remains challenging. ELRs, protein-based polymers derived from tropoelastin, emulate the mechanical and bioactive properties of natural tissues, making t...

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are proteins that, despite lacking a defined 3D structure, are capable of adopting dynamic conformations. This structural adaptability allows them to play not only essential roles in crucial cellular processes, such as subcellular organization or transcriptional control, but also in coordinating the assembly...

Large bone defects are a significant health problem today with various origins, including extensive trauma, tumours, or congenital musculoskeletal disorders. Tissue engineering, and in particular bone tissue engineering, aims to respond to this demand. As such, we propose a specific model based on Elastin-Like Recombinamers-based click-chemistry hy...

Developing in vitro models that accurately mimic the microenvironment of biological structures or processes holds substantial promise for gaining insights into specific biological functions. In the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, in vitro models able to capture the precise structural, topographical, and functional complexity...

Globally, 1.3 billion tons of food fit for human consumption have been estimated to be wasted or lost per year. Subsequently, a broad scope of negative consequences generates unnecessary emissions of greenhouse gases related to the destruction of land, water, and energy. However, there is an increasing citizen, scientific, and political consensus a...

Native tissues feature unique hierarchical designs, in which fiber units are arranged from the bottom up in anisotropic patterns. The processing of biomaterials into fibers, followed by their textile‐like assembly into complex patterns, is therefore a promising avenue to engineer native‐like tissue replacements. Here it is shown for the first time...

Despite the remarkable progress in the generation of recombinant elastin-like (ELR) hydrogels, further improvements are still required to enhance and control their viscoelasticity, as well as limit the use of expensive chemical reagents, time-consuming processes and several purification steps. To alleviate this issue, the reactivity of carboxylic g...

Aims/Purpose: The TP53 Arg72Pro polymorphism has been linked to the risk of proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) and may alter the functional prognosis of individuals with retinal detachment (RD). The current study aims to determine the effect of the TP53 Arg72Pro variant on inflammation and apoptosis following RD. Methods: Sixty patients undergoi...

More than 260 million surgical procedures are performed worldwide each year. Although sutures and staples are widely used to reconnect tissues, they can cause further damage and increase the risk of infection. Bioadhesives have been proposed as an alternative to reconnect tissues. However, clinical adhesives that combine strong adhesion with cytoco...

The 3D printing of titanium (Ti) offers countless possibilities for the development of personalized implants with suitable mechanical properties for different medical applications. However, the poor bioactivity of Ti is still a challenge that needs to be addressed to promote scaffold osseointegration. The aim of the present study was to functionali...

Multicomponent self-assembly offers opportunities for the design of complex and functional biomaterials with tunable properties. Here, we demonstrate how minor modifications in the molecular structures of peptide amphiphiles (PAs) and elastin-like recombinamers (ELs) can be used to generate coassembling tubular membranes with distinct structures, p...

The involvement of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in tumor progression has motivated the development of biomaterials mimicking the tumor ECM to develop more predictive cancer models. Particularly, polypeptides based on elastin could be an interesting approach to mimic the ECM due to their tunable properties. Here, we demonstrated that elastin-like...

Healthy regeneration of tissue relies on a well-orchestrated release of growth factors. Herein, we show the use of synthetic glycosaminoglycans for controlled binding and release of growth factors to induce a desired cellular response. First, we screened glycosaminoglycans with growth factors of interest to determine kon (association rate constant)...

Background Modulation of post-ischaemic remodelling is a significant clinical need.¹ Ischaemia results in the loss of millions of living cells as a result of the hypoxic condition.¹ However, our tissue is programmed to compensate for this loss by activating a remodelling program which leads to the formation of a fibrotic scar.¹ Inspired by the natu...

Elastin‐Like Recombinamers In article 2201646 by José Carlos Rodriguez‐Cabello and co‐workers, a 3D model scaffold containing two cylindrical elastin‐like recombinamer (ELR) hydrogels embedded in a slow‐resorbable or nonprotease‐sensitive ELR hydrogel that allow the independent spatiotemporal control of angiogenesis and neurogenesis in vivo, by the...

Spatiotemporal control of vascularization and innervation is a desired hallmark in advanced tissue regeneration. For this purpose, we design a 3D model scaffold, based on elastin‐like recombinamer (ELR) hydrogels. This contains two interior and well‐defined areas, small cylinders, with differentiated bioactivities with respect to the bulk. Both are...

Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is a leading vascular disease whose clinical manifestations include varicose veins, edemas, venous ulcers, and venous hypertension, among others. Therapies targeting this medical issue are scarce, and so far, no single venous valve prosthesis is clinically available. Herein, we have designed a bi-leaflet transcath...

Understanding the interplay between order and disorder in intrinsically disorder proteins (IDPs), and its impact on the properties and features of materials manufactured from them, is a major challenge in the design of protein-based synthetic polymers intended for advanced functions. In this paper an elastin-like diblock co-recombinamer amphiphile...

Elastin‐like recombinamers (ELRs) are proteinaceous biopolymers obtained by recombinant technology and which sequence is inspired by natural elastin. Genetic engineering allows total control over amino acid sequence and design of ELR structures in a versatile way that can include bioactive, structural, or functional domains. ELRs can be used as pre...

Materials that combine the functionalities of both of proteins and graphene are of great interest for the engineering of biosensing, drug delivery, and regenerative devices. Graphene oxide (GO) offers an opportunity to design GO‐protein interactions but the need for harsh reduction processes to enable GO photoexcitation remains a limitation. A disi...

Design and fabrication of implants that can perform better than autologous bone grafts remain an unmet challenge for the hard tissue regeneration in craniomaxillofacial applications. Here, we report an integrated approach combining additive manufacturing with supramolecular chemistry to develop acellular mineralizing 3D printed scaffolds for hard t...

Hindlimb ischemia is an unmet medical need, especially for those patients unable to undergo vascular surgery. Cellular therapy, mainly through mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) administration, may be a potentially attractive approach in this setting. In the current work, we aimed to assess the potential of the combination of MSCs with a proangiogenic...

Heart valve tissue engineering (HVTE) aims to provide living autologous heart valve implants endowed with regenerative capabilities and life‐long durability. However, fabrication of biomimetic scaffolds capable of providing the required functionality in terms of mechanical performance and tunable porosity to enable cellular infiltration remains a m...

Steel corrosion is a global issue that affects safety and the economy. Currently, the homopolysaccharide (HoPS) structure of a novel lactic acid bacterium (LAB) is under study, as well as its application as a green corrosion inhibitor. Weissella cibaria FMy 2-21-1 is a LAB strain capable of producing HoPS in sucrose enriched media. The isolated and...

Purpose: Degenerative mechanisms of retinal neurodegenerative diseases (RND) share common cellular and molecular signalization pathways. Curative treatment does not exist and cell-based therapy, through the paracrine properties of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), is a potential unspecific treatment for RND. This study aimed to evaluate the neuroprote...

Cartilage diseases currently affect a high percentage of the world’s population. Almost all of these diseases, such as osteoarthritis (OA), cause inflammation of this soft tissue. However, this could be controlled with biomaterials that act as an anti-inflammatory delivery system, capable of dosing these drugs over time in a specific area. The obje...

The increase in fracture rates and/or problems associated with missing bones due to accidents or various pathologies generates socio-health problems with a very high impact. Tissue engineering aims to offer some kind of strategy to promote the repair of damaged tissue or its restoration as close as possible to the original tissue. Among the alterna...

Elastin-like polymers (ELPs) and their chimeric subfamily the silk elastin-like polymers (SELPs) exhibit a lower critical solvation temperature (LCST) behavior in water which has been extensively studied from theoretical, computational and experimental perspectives. The inclusion of silk domains in the backbone of the ELPs effects the molecular dyn...

Despite lacking cooperatively folded structures under native conditions, numerous intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) nevertheless have great functional importance. These IDPs are hybrids containing both ordered and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs), the structure of which is highly flexible in this unfolded state. The conformat...

Current cutting-edge strategies in biomaterials science are focused on mimicking the design of natural systems which, over millions of years, have evolved to exhibit extraordinary properties. Based on this premise, one of the most challenging tasks is to imitate the natural extracellular matrix (ECM), due to its ubiquitous character and its crucial...

Dermo-epidermal equivalents based on plasma-derived fibrin hydrogels have been extensively studied for skin engineering. However, they showed rapid degradation and contraction over time and low mechanical properties which limit their reproducibility and lifespan. In order to achieve better mechanical properties, elasticity and biological properties...

Dynamic soft materials that have the ability to expand and contract, change stiffness, self-heal or dissolve in response to environmental changes, are of great interest in applications ranging from biosensing and drug delivery to soft robotics and tissue engineering. This book covers the state-of-the-art and current trends in the very active and ex...

One of the main challenges in regenerative medicine is the spatiotemporal control of angiogenesis, which is key for the successful repair of many tissues, and determines the proper integration of the implant through the generation of a functional vascular network. To this end, we have designed a three-dimensional (3D) model consisting of a coaxial...

Material platforms based on interaction between organic and inorganic phases offer enormous potential to develop materials that can recreate the structural and functional properties of biological systems. However, the capability of organic-mediated mineralizing strategies to guide mineralization with spatial control remains a major limitation. Here...

The development of techniques for fabricating vascular wall models will foster the development of preventive and therapeutic therapies for treating cardiovascular diseases. However, the physical and biological complexity of vascular tissue represents a major challenge, especially for the design and the production of off-the-shelf biomimetic vascula...

Self-assembling bioinks offer the possibility to biofabricate with molecular precision, hierarchical control, and biofunctionality. For this to become a reality with widespread impact, it is essential to engineer these ink systems ensuring reproducibility and providing suitable standardization. We have reported a self-assembling bioink based on dis...

Polymer-based tri-layered (bone, intermediate and top layers) scaffolds used for the restoration of articular cartilage were prepared and characterized in this study to emulate the concentration gradient of cartilage. The scaffolds were physically or chemically crosslinked. In order to obtain adequate scaffolds for the intended application, the imp...

Ischemic heart disease is a leading cause of mortality due to irreversible damage to cardiac muscle. Inspired by the post-ischemic microenvironment, we devised an extracellular matrix (ECM)–mimicking hydrogel using catalyst-free click chemistry covalent bonding between two elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs). The resulting customized hydrogel include...

The increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is driving strong demand for new antimicrobial biomaterials. This work describes the fabrication of free-standing films exhibiting antimicrobial properties by combining, in the same polypeptide chain, an elastin-like recombinamer comprising 200 repetitions of the pentamer VPAVG (A200) and an 18-ami...

Bone’s inherent piezoelectricity is a key factor in regulating bone growth and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) fate towards the osteogenic lineage. The piezoelectric polymer poly(vinylidene) fluoride (PVDF) was thus used to manufacture electroactive membranes by means of non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS), producing porous membranes with app...

Critical limb ischemia (CLI) is characterized by the impairment of microcirculation, necrosis and inflammation of the muscular tissue. Although the role of glycans in mediating inflammation has been reported, changes in the glycosylation following muscle ischemia remains poorly understood. Here, a murine CLI model was used to show the increase of h...

Porous biomaterials are of significant interest in a variety of biomedical applications as they enable the diffusion of nutrients and gases as well as the removal of metabolic waste from the implants. Pores also provide 3D spaces for cell compartmentalisation and the development of complex structures such as vasculature and the extracellular matrix...

In article number 2005191, José Carlos Rodríguez‐Cabello and co‐workers report micrometric colporate biomorphs self‐assembled from an intrinsically disordered silk‐elastin‐like protein, in which the concurrent effect of hydrophobic, electrostatic and H‐bonding interactions are capable of generating and kinetically trapping complex and transient str...

The development of intricate and complex self‐assembling structures in the micrometer range, such as biomorphs, is a major challenge in materials science. Although complex structures can be obtained from self‐assembling materials as they segregate from solution, their size is usually in the nanometer range or requires accessory techniques. Previous...

The control of the morphology, as well as the physical and chemical properties, of nanopores is a key issue for many applications. Reducing pore size is important in nanopore-based sensing applications as it helps to increase sensitivity. Changes of other physical properties such as surface net charge can also modify transport selectivity of the po...

Ti-6Al-4V alloy obtained by powder metallurgy (PM) is a good candidate biomaterial in the manufacture of dental implants but its inherent porosity makes it have worse corrosion behavior than conventionally obtained alloys. In order to improve the corrosion and biological properties, surface modification technologies could be used. The plasma electr...

Diffusion of organic and inorganic molecules controls most industrial and biological processes that occur in a liquid phase. Although significant efforts have been devoted to the design and operation of large-scale purification systems, diffusion devices with adjustable biochemical characteristics have remained difficult to achieve. In this regard,...

Intrinsically disordered protein polymers (IDPPs) have attracted a lot of attention in the development of bioengineered devices and for use as study models in molecular biology due to their biomechanical properties and stimuli-responsiveness. The present study aims to understand the effect of charge density on the self-assembly of IDPPs. To that en...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted great interest as they constitute one of the most promising alternatives against drug-resistant infections. Their amphipathic nature provides them antimicrobial and immunomodulatory properties but also the ability to self-assemble into supramolecular nanostructures. Here, we propose their use as self-ass...

Stroke and cardiovascular episodes are still some of the most common diseases worldwide, causing millions of deaths and costing billions of Euros to healthcare systems. The use of new biomaterials with enhanced biological and physical properties has opened the door to new approaches in cardiovascular applications. Elastin-based materials are biomat...

Complex recombinant biomaterials that merge the self‐assembling properties of different (poly)peptides provide a powerful tool for the achievement of specific structures, such as hydrogel networks, by tuning the thermodynamics and kinetics of the system through a tailored molecular design. In this work, elastin‐like (EL) and silk‐like (SL) polypept...

Multicomponent self-assembly holds great promise for the generation of complex and functional biomaterials with hierarchical microstructure. Here, we describe the use of supramolecular co-assembly between an elastin-like recombinamer (ELR5) and a peptide amphiphile (PA) to organize graphene oxide (GO) flakes into bioactive structures across multipl...

Natural polymers are commonly used as scaffolds for vascular tissue engineering. The recognized biological properties of this class of materials are often counterbalanced by their low mechanical performance. In this work, recombinant elastin-like polypeptides (or elastin-like recombinamers, ELRs) were mixed with collagen gel and cells to produce ce...

Large skeletal muscle injuries, such as a volumetric muscle loss (VML), often result in an incomplete regeneration due to the formation of a non-contractile fibrotic scar tissue. This is, in part, due to the outbreak of an inflammatory response, which is not resolved over time, meaning that type-1 macrophages (M1, pro-inflammatory) involved in the...

Janus nanoparticles offer enormous possibilities through a binary selective functionalization and dual properties. Their self-assembly has attracted strong interest due to their potential as building blocks to obtain molecular colloids, supracrystals and well-organized nanostructures that can lead to new functionalities. However, this self-assembly...

Implant-associated infections (IAIs) are one of the leading concerns in orthopedics and dentistry as they commonly lead to implant failure. The presence of biofilms and, increasingly frequently, drug-resistant bacteria further impairs the efficacy of conventional antibiotics. Immobilization of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) on implant surface is a p...

An injectable elastin-like recombinamer (ELR) hydrogel for use in a method of treating a mammal that has suffered a myocardial infarction to modulate the response of cardiac muscle damaged by the infarct is described. The hydrogel is injected into the cardiac muscle damaged by the infarct at least two days after the myocardial infarction, and resul...

In the development of tissue engineering strategies to replace, remodel, regenerate, or support damaged tissue, the development of bioinspired biomaterials that recapitulate the physicochemical characteristics of the extracellular matrix has received increased attention. Given the compositional heterogeneity and tissue‐to‐tissue variation of the ex...

In the development of drug delivery systems, researchers pursue multifunctionality to target more complex problems, while maintaining biocompatibility and high encapsulation efficiency. Herein, we describe the preparation of noncytotoxic particles with intrinsic antimicrobial properties able to entrap bioactive compounds. The particles are composed...

Supramolecular chemistry offers an exciting opportunity to assemble materials with molecular precision. However, there remains an unmet need to turn molecular self-assembly into functional materials and devices. Harnessing the inherent properties of both disordered proteins and graphene oxide (GO), we report a disordered protein-GO co-assembling sy...

Various tissue engineering systems for cartilage repair have been designed and tested over the past two decades, leading to the development of many promising cartilage grafts. However, no one has yet succeeded in devising an optimal system to restore damaged articular cartilage. Here, the design, assembly and biological testing of a porous, chitosa...

Vascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide, but surgical options are restricted by the limited availability of autologous vessels, and the suboptimal performance of prosthetic vascular grafts. This is especially evident for coronary artery by-pass grafts, whose small caliber is associated with a high occlusion propensity. Despite the po...

The versatility of 3D bioprinting techniques has demonstrated great potential for the development of artificial engineered tissues that more closely resemble native tissues. Despite this, challenges remain as regards the search for new bioinks that embrace all the complex parameters that this technique demands. In an attempt to develop such an adva...

The complexity and continuous evolution of cancer make the design of novel strategies of treatment a constant challenge in biomedicine. Moreover, most of cancer treatments are still not tumor-specific and provoke high systemic toxicity. Herein we have developed a novel selective nanodevice to eliminate tumor cells while leaving healthy ones intact....

Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death around the world. Endovascular stenting is the preferred treatment option to restore blood flow in the coronary arteries due to the lower perioperative morbidity when compared with more invasive treatment options. However, stent failure is still a major clinical problem, and further technologica...

Heart failure caused by myocardial infarction (MI) is a burgeoning clinical problem. The modulation of post-ischemic remodelling after MI may ameliorate the deleterious effect of myocardial infarction on cardiac function. Elastin is a main component of the cardiac ECM and has critical functions in vasculature structures. We hypothesized that an ela...

Nosocomial infections are one of the most frequent causes of indwelling biomedical device failure. In this regard, the use of anti-biofilm nanocoatings based on antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is a promising alternative to prevent multiresistant biofilm infections. However, the limitations of chemical production impede the large-scale development of...

Elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs), which derive from one of the repetitive domains found in natural elastin, have been intensively studied in the last few years from several points of view. In this mini review, we discuss all the recent works related to the investigation of ELRs, starting with those that define these polypeptides as model intrinsic...

A cellular coating based on hydrophobic interactions of an elastin-like recombinamer (ELR) with the cell membrane is presented. It is well-documented that biophysical properties such as net charge, hydrophobicity, and protein-driven cell–ligand (integrin binding) interactions influence the interaction of polymers, proteins or peptides with model me...

The aim of this study was to evaluate injectable, in situ cross-linkable elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs) for osteochondral repair. Both the ELR-based hydrogel alone and the ELR-based hydrogel embedded with rabbit mesenchymal stromal cells (rMSCs) were tested for the regeneration of critical subchondral defects in 10 New Zealand rabbits. Thus, cyl...

Biomaterial design in tissue engineering aims to identify appropriate cellular microenvironments in which cells can grow and guide new tissue formation. Despite the large diversity of synthetic polymers available for regenerative medicine, most of them fail to fully match the functional properties of their native counterparts. In contrast, the few...

The topic of self-assembled structures based on elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs, i.e., elastin-like polymers recombinantly bio-produced) has released a noticeable amount of references in the last few years. Most of them are intended for biomedical applications. In this review, a complete revision of the bibliography is carried out. Initially, the...

Control over biodegradation processes is crucial to generate advanced functional structures with a more interactive and efficient role for biomedical applications. Herein, a simple, high-throughput approach is developed based on a three-dimensional (3D)-structured system that allows a preprogramed spatial-temporal control over cell infiltration and...