Development of a cement with cells embedded in alginate to reconstruct large osseous defects

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5% of infants born in North America have birth defects, and three-quarters of these involve the craniofacial complex (head, face, and oral tissues). There are hundreds of disorders affecting the face, skull, jaws, and teeth. The cleft lip with or without cleft palate is the most common one (1:1000 births). Craniofacial defects may also result from tumor resection and from trauma. The social and economic costs of these craniofacial disorders and defects are enormous and they create a high burden on particular groups in the population. The loss of hard tissues (bone or cartilage) due to these craniofacial defects represents serious problems in head and neck surgery. Rehabilitation treatments available for these patients are autologous bone grafts, allografts, and synthetic bone grafts. Synthetic cements such as the calcium phosphate-based cements are of particular interest to treat craniofacial defects because they can be contoured to the shape of the defects to be repaired. However for large osseous defects (such as those seen in resections due to head and neck cancer, osteoradionecrosis, or cleft palates), no use of biomaterial alone or combinations of biomaterials can regenerate fully these lost tissues. We propose to test a new generation of "cell-based hybrid biomaterial" that can deliver progenitor cells to specific craniofacial defects and diseases. Our proposed biomaterial consists of 3 main components: 1) autologous mesenchymal progenitor cells (isolated from extracted teeth) which are encapsulated into 2) alginate and seeded into 3) calcium phosphate cements.