ART-BONE · Manufacturing of Artificial Bone for Repair and Regeneration of Large Osseous Defects

Manufacturing of Artificial Bone for Repair and Regeneration of Large Osseous Defects

Bone repair and regeneration with postoperative restoration of original structure and functions is a significant clinical goal in traumatology, orthopaedics and oral and maxillofacial surgery. Bone's self-healing capacity can be compromised in the context of large, critical-size osseous defects and non-union fractures caused by trauma, infection, osteoradionecrosis, ablative oncologic surgery, congenital abnormality, or metabolic bone diseases. These defects and fractures often result in long-term aesthetic deformities and/or functional damages which deeply affect patients’ emotional and physical well-being. To treat these defects and promote bone regeneration, there exists an urgent and ever-increasing demand for ‘off-the-shelf’ and cost-effective biomaterial-based therapies to substitute the ever-increasing number of costly and painful autologous bone grafting procedures. Bone grafting is a surgical intervention to reconstruct a damaged or diseased bone with a new bone from the patient′s own body (autografts) or a deceased donor (allografts), a skeletal material of animal origin (xenografts), or a man-made, synthetic substitute (alloplasts, commonly named biomaterials). These biomaterials have evolved through four different generations as follows: bioinert, dense ceramics, metals, alloys, stainless steels and ultra-high-molecular-weight polymers (1st generation); bioactive, dense or porous ceramics, bioglass and cements, or bioresorbable polymers (2nd generation); bioactive and bioresorbable, porous hybrid materials (3rd generation); biomimetic materials so far limited to a handful of second- and third-generation biomaterials functionalized with soluble, secreted signalling polypeptides (or, growth factors) whose role is to trigger new bone formation (4th generation). The goal of the ART-BONE project was to develop and evaluate a new class of fourth generation biomaterials for bone repair. To reach this goal, the fellow achieved three different objectives: the fellow designed (objective 1), characterized (objective 2) and evaluated (objective 3) bone-mimetic biomaterials in the form of inorganic-organic composite materials. The fellow has also compared these bone-mimetic biomaterials with traditional biomaterials for bone repair and regeneration. As a conclusion, this action provides a new mechanistic understanding of the physicochemical processes underlying osteogenesis. Further, this action has had a major impact in the researcher’s career since it allowed him to secure a permanent academic position within less than a year after the end of the action.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union