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

目前对创伤、先天性缺陷或癌症导致的骨缺损的临床治疗受到供体部位发病率、感染风险、不良外观和功能结局以及有限可用组织的阻碍。工程化骨具有为骨缺损提供治疗而没有严重副作用的潜力。 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，使用大型动物模型制造用于缺损的工程骨。骨将在生物材料中生长，以允许潜在的移植到患者体内。这将允许在不需要自体组织的情况下治疗骨缺损。组织工程研究主要集中在组织的生长，以修复或替换受损或患病的组织和器官。骨组织工程因其能修复大面积骨缺损而受到广泛关注。目前的临床治疗是自体组织重建，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关注基于生物材料的策略以促进血管化组织的形成。研究人员无法生长临床大小的组织体积的原因之一是无法充分血管化人类大小的支架。骨形成和血管化是一个动态的、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，使用基于水凝胶的支架接种间充质干细胞将改善组织侵袭，这将导致成骨组织的形成。该提案的目标是将具有优化的促血管化特性的基于水凝胶的支架与MSCS结合联合收割机，以研究猪肋骨-骨缺损模型中的骨形成。该奖项在东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划下支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和台湾科技部共同资助。

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.