I-Corps: Nanochon, a Commercial Venture to 3D Print Regenerative Implants for Joint Reconstruction

关节（膝关节、肩关节和髋关节）的急性和慢性骨科损伤通常会影响和损害软骨和骨的结构完整性。目前的治疗方法可能极具侵入性，如全髋关节和膝关节金属植入。其他集中于移植组织、尸体和合成材料的治疗方案的临床成功有限。此外，这一人群中很大一部分是儿科。儿科患者不能接受全关节置换术，因此，仅限于效果较差的基于移植物的方法。另一个潜在的部分是运动医学，我们的系统可以快速修复大而复杂的损伤，并使运动员恢复到受伤前的水平。所提出的技术将提供一种易于使用，有效和永久的选择，同时减少手术时间和患者恢复时间。这将为医院和外科医生提供一个高度可行的再生装置，用于那些患有晚期关节损伤，但不适合全关节置换术的患者。I-Corps团队开发了一种高度工程化的、患者特异性的、三维（3D）生物启发的植入物，用于使用我们之前开发的新型3D打印技术和纳米材料治疗断裂的、不稳定的骨软骨缺陷。该团队建议使用计算机辅助设计（CAD）和3D打印技术，利用这些先进的纳米材料复合材料制造功能性3D骨软骨植入物。我们建议开展一个项目，以优化我们的材料组成和3D打印设计制造。参与I-Corps和提供的资金将进一步发现客户，特别是在目标儿科和运动医学客户领域，为现有拟议原型的设计修改提供信息，并促进为小动物和大型动物模型的后期研发活动筹集资金。这些研究模型对于最终的科学验证至关重要，并将使团队能够继续寻求私人资本来源和行业合作伙伴的投资，并获得FDA的批准。

Acute and chronic orthopedic injuries to articulating joints (knee, shoulder, and hip) typically affect and compromise the structural integrity of cartilage and bone. Current treatments can be extremely invasive, such as total hip and knee metallic implants. Other treatment options focusing on graft tissue, cadaver and synthetic material have had limited clinical success. In addition, a large segment of this population is pediatric. Pediatric patients cannot receive a total joint replacement, and, thus, are confined to less effective graft-based approaches. Another potential segment lies in sports medicine, where our system could repair large and complex injuries quickly and restore athletes to pre-injury levels of performance. The proposed technology would provide an easy-to-use, effective and permanent option while reducing surgical procedure time and patient recovery time. This would in turn provide hospitals and surgeons with a highly viable regenerative device for those patients suffering from advanced joint injury, but who are not viable candidates for total joint replacement. This I-Corps team has developed a highly engineered, patient specific, three-dimensional (3D) biologically inspired implant for treatment of disrupted, unstable osteochondral defects using our previously developed novel 3D printing techniques and nanomaterials. This team proposes to use computer aided design (CAD), along with 3D printing, to fabricate functional 3D osteochondral implants from these advanced nanomaterial composites. We propose to carry out a project in order to optimize the composition of our materials and 3D printed design for manufacture. Participation in the I-Corps and funding provided will further customer discovery, especially in the targeted pediatric and sports medicine customer segments, inform design modifications to the existing proposed prototype and catalyze efforts to generate funding for late stage R&D activities in small animal and large animal models. These research models are essential for final scientific validation and will allow the team to move forward with pursuit of investment from private capital sources and industry partnerships, as well as moving forward with FDA approval.