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

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响与使用患者自己的脂肪组织进行损伤或手术后的修复有关。移除组织以消除通过疾病或创伤造成的损伤，通常随后是修复组织以恢复形式和功能。虽然有各种各样的材料可供选择，但长期以来，使用患者自身的脂肪进行这些手术一直被认为是一种明显的选择。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，这取决于它的收获地点。由于在收获过程中特定物理性质的损失，该材料在外科手术中的使用受到抑制。提供一个矩阵来重建这些属性可能会使脂肪移植成为一个更常见的程序。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，这种选择使从患者身上收集的脂肪能够解决每年进行的数十万次重建手术。该技术使用高度无序的蛋白质来产生定义的3D结构，以复制身体的机械和生物活动。使用迭代设计和分子工程，该团队已经产生了一类新的生物材料，这些材料非常适合满足脂肪移植支持基质的关键标准，包括可注射性，体内相变为坚固的固体，以及生物相容性，以允许细胞活力和血管化。该项目的重点是优化重建程序的矩阵，包括面部，乳房，截肢部位和脚垫组织。该奖项反映了NSF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.