UQ-Surf Tech: Making Waves in Regenerative Medicine

Did you know that inside tiny droplets of liquid, researchers are manipulating particles using the body’s own regenerative methods, opening new pathways for repairing and replacing damaged organs?  

A team of researchers at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, led by Dr Ruirui Qiao, have successfully patented a breakthrough tool accelerating this research and bringing regenerative medicine solutions closer to reality.

Dr Qiao said her team’s new polymer formula for microfluidics - UQ-Surf – is a surfactant that can create thousands of microdroplets a minute, each one a temperature-responsive research environment for exploring tissue engineering and cell therapies.  .

“In a microgel droplet we can work with materials in ways that would otherwise have been impossible,” Dr Qiao said.

“But it is extremely tricky to create microgels capable of incubating living materials.

“The technology we’ve created greatly simplifies the process - saving time and money – with an added option of changing the droplet’s function by simply changing the temperature.”

Crucially, the microgel droplets fabricated with UQ-Surf technology do not require harsh chemical treatments to make them viable for clinical use, better protecting the sensitive cargo inside.

“The level of control you get with traditional microgel droplets usually comes at a cost – the potential contamination of the living material you’re working with,” Dr Qiao said.

“UQ-Surf removes this risk, because we don’t need harmful chemical demulsifiers or additional processing steps to recover encapsulated microgels.

“We only need to change the temperature.”

Dr Qiao said UQ-Surf had the potential to support a diverse range of biomedical applications, including 3D in vitro models for drug screening, targeted delivery of drugs, cells and genes, and advancements in tissue engineering.

The technology has been patented through UQ commercialisation company UniQuest and has already been deployed in the lab, showcasing its market potential.

“The global microfluidics market is projected to reach $US41.6 billion ($64.2 billion) by 2028, nearly double what it was in 2023,” Dr Qiao said.

“Our aim is to play a role in this growth.”

This research was published in Advanced Materials Interfaces on 27 May 2025 and included input from AIBN colleagues Professor Tom Davis, Xiangke Li, Dr Helen Forgham, Qiuren Shen, and Dr Liwen Zhang, as well as researchers from the UQ School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, Brisbane-based biotech Gelomics, the University of Adelaide, and the National University of Singapore.