Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Spinal implants represent a significant global business with revenues at US$6.5B (2009). While current synthetic technologies have demonstrated clinical success, today's reality is that these implants are far inferior to natural bone. Recently, the search for a synthetic bone graft that performs as well or better than autograft has intensified, but no product has yet to reach the prominence of autologous bone grafts (i.e. bone harvested from patient's iliac crest) and consequently autograft still dominates the market. The objective of this project is to develop an engineered biomaterial that emulates all the beneficial properties of natural bone and avoids the painful bone harvest procedure. The technology will be implemented in an array of new spinal products - a core area of expertise of the industrial sponsor, Octane Orthobiologics Inc. The animal work proposed is to specify and validate material performance.The proposed technology is unique in that the four key attributes of natural bone will be replicated for the first time in a fully synthetic biomaterial. This achievement will result in the first synthetic bone biomaterial that has a performance indistinguishable from the gold standard of natural bone, while simultaneously avoiding the risks associated with naturally sourced tissues. The net result will be a synthetic and customizable biomimetic implant that will match or exceed the performance of natural bone tissue.