EAPSI: Fabrication of Clinically Engineered Scaffolds for Bone Defects using a Large Animal Model

目前由于创伤、先天性缺陷或癌症引起的骨缺损的临床治疗受到供体部位发病率、感染风险、不良的美容和功能结果以及可用组织有限的阻碍。工程化骨有可能为骨缺损提供治疗，而不会产生严重的副作用。该奖项支持与台北桃园长庚纪念医院郑明辉博士的研究合作，利用大型动物模型制造缺陷工程骨。骨将在生物材料中生长，以便有可能移植到患者体内。这将允许在不需要自体组织的情况下治疗骨缺损。组织工程学研究主要集中在组织的生长，以修复或替换受损或疾病的组织和器官。骨组织工程由于需要重建大体积骨缺损区而备受关注。目前的临床治疗方法是自体组织重建，取得了一定的成功，但也存在一定的局限性。组织工程和再生医学通常侧重于以生物材料为基础的策略，以促进血管组织形成。研究人员无法生长出临床大小的组织体积的原因之一是无法使人体大小的支架充分血管化。骨形成和血管化是一个动态、协调的过程。考虑这两个过程的策略有更大的临床成功机会。研究表明，使用种植了间充质干细胞的水凝胶支架可以改善组织侵袭，从而导致成骨组织的形成。这项建议的目标是将具有优化的促血管形成特性的水凝胶支架与MSCSS相结合，以研究猪肋骨缺损模型中的骨形成。该奖项由东亚和太平洋暑期学院项目资助一名美国研究生的暑期研究，由美国国家科学基金会和台湾科技部联合资助。

The current clinical treatment of bone defects resulting from trauma, congenital defects, or cancer is hindered by donor site morbidity, risk of infection, poor cosmetic and functional outcomes, and limited available tissue. Engineered bone has the potential for providing treatment for bone defects without severe side effects. This award supports a research collaboration with Dr. Ming-Huei Cheng at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taoyuan, Taipei to fabricate engineered bone for defects using a large animal model. The bone will be grown within a biomaterial to allow potential transplantation into patients. This will allow for treatment of bone defects without the need of autologous tissue. Tissue engineering research is primarily focused on growth of tissue to repair or replace damaged or disease tissues and organs. Bone tissue engineering has gained significant attention due to the need for reconstruction of large bone volume defects. The current clinical treatment is reconstruction with autologous tissue, which has seen some success, however, is not without limitations. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine often focus on biomaterial based strategies to promote vascularized tissue formation. One of the reasons why researchers are unable to grow clinically sized tissue volumes is the inability to sufficiently vascularized human sized scaffolds. Bone formation and vascularization is a dynamic, coordinated processes. Strategies that consider both processes have a greater chance of clinical success. Research has shown using hydrogel based scaffolds seeded with mesenchymal stem cells will improve tissue invasion that will lead to formation of osteogenic tissue. The goal of this proposal is to combine a hydrogel based scaffolds, with optimized pro-vascularization properties, with MSCSs to investigate bone formation in a pig rib-bone defect model. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.