Grant: Emerging Team Grant: Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine - LOI

The reconstruction of defects in bone that arise from traumatic injury, degenerative disease or tumor excision, is a significant challenge to orthopaedic and maxillofacial surgeons. Currently available modalities to assist in the healing process include bone grafts and growth factors, which are aimed at promoting native bone regeneration through the recruitment of bone forming cells to the site of injury. These approaches are impractical to assist healing in large defects, due to an inadequate supply of bone graft material and growth factors, and in cases where the existing supply of precursor cells from which bone forming cells develop is depleted. The long term goal of the Emerging Team in Surveillance of Bone Repair In Vivo is to establish a platform for the systematic assessment of the bone forming properties of novel materials in small animal models of human bone disease. Critical biological information such as acidity, matrix proteins, oxygen, micromechanical forces, growth factor availability and others will be captured using microsensors implanted in the bone microenvironment. A wireless signal generated by the implanted device will be relayed to a handheld computer and correlated with outcome measures that define the architecture, molecular and cellular composition and biomechanical strength of the bone regenerate. Knowledge gained will be used to custom design scaffolds for in vivo delivery of bone forming cells in specific clinical circumstances. Microsensors can be mass produced for implantation at the time of surgery and programmed as "sense-response" systems, to deliver appropriate reagents on demand that will expedite the course of bone healing.