SBIR Phase I: An Injectable Protein Matrix to Enhance the Stability of Autologous Fat Grafts

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的广泛影响与使用患者自身的脂肪组织进行损伤或手术后的修复有关。切除组织以消除疾病或创伤造成的损害，随后通常是修复组织以恢复其形态和功能。虽然有多种材料可供选择，但使用患者自身的脂肪进行这些手术一直被认为是一个显而易见的选择。脂肪可以安全地收获，富含干细胞和生长因子，并具有其他理想的特性，这取决于收获的地点。由于在收获过程中失去了特定的物理性质，这种材料在外科手术中的使用受到了抑制。提供一个矩阵来重建这些特性可能会使脂肪移植成为一种更普遍的手术。通过优化这种基质材料的结构和配方，组织工程可以被一种现成的选择所破坏，这种选择可以从患者身上获取脂肪，以解决每年进行的数十万次重建手术。提出的项目是基于使用基于弹性蛋白的重组蛋白来解决当前组织修复支架的局限性。提出的技术使用高度无序的蛋白质来产生定义的3D结构来复制人体的机械和生物活动。利用迭代设计和分子工程，该团队已经产生了一种新的生物材料，它独特地适合于满足脂肪移植支持基质的关键标准，包括可注射性，体内相变到坚固的固体，以及允许细胞活力和血管化的生物相容性。该项目侧重于优化用于重建程序的基质，包括面部、乳房、截肢部位和足垫组织。可能需要一系列具有独特生物力学性能的材料来解决每个目标用例。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is related to the use of a patient’s own fat tissue for repair after injury or surgery. Removing tissue to eliminate damage through disease or trauma is universally followed by repairing tissue to restore form and function. While a broad range of materials are available, the use of a patient’s own fat for these procedures has long been considered an obvious option. Fat can be safely harvested, is rich in stem cells and growth factors and has other desirable properties, depending on the location from which it is harvested. The use of this material for surgical procedures has been inhibited by a loss of specific physical properties during the harvesting procedure. Providing a matrix to reconstruct these properties is likely to render fat grafting a more commonplace procedure. By optimizing structure and formulation of this matrix material, tissue engineering can be disrupted with an off-the-shelf option enabling harvested fat from a patient to address the hundreds of thousands of reconstructive procedures undertaken each year.The proposed project is based on the use of elastin-based recombinant proteins to address the current limitations of tissue repair scaffolds. The proposed technology uses highly disordered proteins to produce defined 3D structures to replicate mechanical and biological activities of the body. Using iterative design and molecular engineering, the team has generated a new class of biomaterials that are uniquely suited to meet the key criteria for a fat grafting support matrix, including injectability, in vivo phase transition to a firm solid, and biocompatibility to allow cellular viability and vascularization. This project focuses on optimization of the matrix for reconstruction procedures, including facial, breast, amputation sites and foot pad tissues. A range of materials with unique biomechanical properties are likely required to address each of the target use cases.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.