Bio-nano-putty can save your arm or leg
According to the US Department of Defense, about 30% of combat injuries include bone damage. The researchers received a grant from the Ministry for a project to develop a miracle putty for joining and restoring leg bones severely damaged or crushed as a result of explosions of antipersonnel mines or various other explosives. Such fractures do not heal well and often never heal. In this case, amputation is resorted to.
The purpose of the grant is to develop a special compound that could serve as a putty and a frame for damaged bones. The total funding is almost $8 million for research work, which is scheduled to be completed by December 2010. The first results should be reported in about a year. Several major research centers of the country cooperate in the project. For the convenience of information exchange between the project participants, a separate website has been launched.
The healing technology of shattered bones should look like this (see Fig. 1-4):
1. Composite material – putty for fractures (or bio-nano-frame) is implanted in the area of severe bone destruction. Cell growth factors (proteins), which are part of the composite material, stimulate cells to grow. The putty is a supporting structure, taking on the distributed body weight so that the patient can walk during the healing process.
2. Putty is absorbed by cells that begin the construction of a new bone. At the same time, a gradual process of degradation of the putty composite begins.
3. As the putty resorbs, the weight is gradually transferred more and more to the regenerated bone, contributing to the functional restoration of the leg.
4. A few months after the injury, the architecture and functions of the bone are fully restored.
Serious leg injuries are usually repaired by replacing part of the bone with an implant. Sometimes materials from the patient's own body are used as an implant, but most often various kinds of studs, plates, screws are used to fasten parts of damaged bones and keep them in the right position throughout the entire period of recovery. These foreign parts are made of artificial, synthetic or natural bone substitutes, for example, metals, require many operations, a very long recovery period of the leg and, moreover, do not always take root, creating a serious risk to the patient's health.
Putty for bone restoration, if the approach to its creation proves successful, will allow soldiers to more easily endure severe injuries and fundamentally accelerate the process of full functional recovery of the legs. Such a putty can also be used in emergency departments for the treatment of civilians injured in car accidents or other accidents, says Dr. Mauro Ferrari (Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D.) – the lead researcher of the project and one of the main functionaries of the Department of Biomedical Technology (Department of Biomedical Engineering), who It was created by the joint efforts of three research centers that are part of the University of Texas.
Success even in a small part of the project can be the beginning of revolutionary transformations in orthopedic medicine. People with serious leg injuries can get the opportunity to fully restore the functions of the limbs, which today are subject to amputation or replacement with permanent artificial prostheses.
As Dr. Ferrari says, the group is working with great enthusiasm to create living material that can be used completely without harm to the destroyed bones of the body. Such material should strengthen the body from the inside and provide strength support until new bones grow. It is well known in medicine that everything that can be done to speed up the healing process is beneficial to the patient. At the same time, the risk of introducing infections and complications is reduced.
The agency funding the project – DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Agency for Advanced Defense Research Projects) is an agency of the US Department of Defense responsible for developing new technologies for use in the armed forces, usually sponsors revolutionary, high–risk, high-impact scientific research that overcomes the problems of basic research and military and civilian applications of the latter. According to Dr. Mitchell Zakin (Ph.D.), one of the managers of DARPA, this project is a unique and perfect combination of modern achievements in materials science, mechanics and orthopedics.
It is assumed that the putty will include a material known as nanoporous silicon, which was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Ferrari. This material should provide the putty with the strength necessary to support the patient's weight during the period of regeneration of new bone tissue.
Of course, the new way to recover long bone injuries is extremely difficult. According to the leading experts of the project, the problem will require the participation of the best minds in the fields of nanoporous materials, peptides, biopolymers, stem cells and adhesives. The desired solution should be the integration of nanomaterials with unique properties into "smart" compositions that can reproduce the structure and functions of bones. The putty should serve as biologically active "scaffolding" and should completely replace the bone for a while. At the same time, the putty should facilitate and accelerate the process of natural bone formation and self-healing of surrounding tissues by attracting the patient's own stem cells. The putty should have a structure similar to the model clay for the convenience of giving it different shapes and sizes, since such a material should be able to be used in various surgical applications, including joining the separated parts of the bone and replacing missing bones. It is possible that the putty will one day be used to treat spinal and craniofacial bone injuries.
Dr. Ferrari's group will begin preliminary tests of the mechanical and biological parameters of candidate compounds with mathematical models and in vitro systems. At the next stage, all compounds will be tested on animal models. If the perclinical trials are successful, patients will be involved in the next stage. Coordination with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already begun.
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09.02.2009