VASCUBONE
Construction kit for tailor-made vascularized boneimplants
Research leaders
Prof. Ann-Christine Albertsson
Assoc. prof. Anna Finne Wistrand
Project information
Currently, the major therapy for bone transplantation is the bone autografts and allografts. Due to its drawbacks of limited amount of bone, the morbidity at the donor site, lack of vascularization, insatiable strength properties and fancy financial cost, the tissue engineering and synthetic bone grafts has become an important therapy of bone defects.
The first step of this project is to synthesize and improve the potential biocompatible composite materials with controllable porosity, optimized protein adhesion, enhanced mechanical properties and homogeneous distribution. This research will combine our experience of polymer synthesis, porous scaffolds fabrication and polymer modification. After the production and establishment of bone implant biomaterials, biomolecules (growth factors) will be anchored covalently on the surface to accelerate the proliferation and differentiation of pluripotent mesenchymal stem cells. However, the tailor-made fabrication process will be developed to improve the degradability with trustworthy mechanical properties. The functionalized scaffolds will be loaded with EPC/MSC, and then evaluated by several analytical methods to develop functional vessels in vitro (angiogenesis). At the end of this project, improved synthetic biomaterials will be examined by preclinical application.