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Background 

Zuzana Oulehlova comes from the Czech Republic, where she gained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at the Technical University of Liberec. During her studies she focused on nanofibrous materials for tissue engineering. For her Master’s thesis, she worked on anti-adhesive nanofibrous patches for gastrointestinal applications. After her studies, she worked at a tissue engineering spin-off from Oxford University, Ivy Farm.

PhD project: Translation of research grade (bench) manufacturing process for first-in-human clinical trials

Zuzana is a PhD student at Cutiss. Cutiss is a Swiss clinical-stage life sciences company focused on regenerative medicine and skin tissue engineering. Cutiss AG is developing denovoSkin™, the first personalized and automated skin tissue therapy offering life-saving medical treatments for patients with severe skin injuries. In her PhD project, Zuzana aims to develop a robust platform for the isolation of melanocytes, characterization, and in vitro expansion of patient-derived melanocytes that could either i) be included into a new generation of pigmented personalized bioengineered skin grafts,  ii) be transplanted to patients in areas that were previously treated with denovoSkin™, or iii) be transplanted to patients harboring pre-existing non-pigmented skin patches caused by untreatable pigmentation disorders (e.g. vitiligo).

Part of Zuzana’s PhD are secondments at Radboud university medical center in the Netherlands and Helmholtz Zentrum München in Germany.

Objectives

1. GMP protocol translation and in vitro validation for isolation/ expansion of human melanocytes. 
2. Implementation of GMP manufacturing protocols into an automated manufacturing system. 
3. Extended pre-clinical characterization of an automated GMP manufactured melanocyte-containing skin construct. 

Supervisors

• Dr. Daniela Marino
• Dr. Laurent Barnes
• Dr. Vincent Ronfard
• Dr. Joaquin Urdinez

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Contact: Zuzana.Oulehlova#cutiss.swiss

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