Electrotherapeutic strategies for connective tissue repair

描述（由申请人提供）：骨、软骨和骨软骨组织工程为再生医学提供了有前途的替代方法，以及研究骨组织发育过程和疾病模型的工具。为了了解电疗因素并促进肌肉骨骼组织的愈合，需要开发形成组织的非侵入性、定量、多尺度成像模式。迄今为止，还没有一种生物反应器系统能够在不牺牲样品或干扰培养条件的情况下实时监测临床尺寸的工程组织，主要是由于培养系统的大小和可移植性，以及成像系统通常位于单独的设施中。我们建议开发一种新的生物反应器系统，它结合了非破坏性成像技术来监测骨、软骨和骨软骨组织的体外发育。我们的目标是整合两个专门从事组织工程和放射成像的实验室的独立工作，以开发一种便携式，成像兼容的生物反应器，使复杂软骨/骨组织结构的定量在线研究成为可能。我们将通过研究软骨内和膜内骨化在微观到宏观水平上的骨形成来严格检验这一假设。将追求三个具体目标：(a)开发集成成像的便携式生物反应器，(b)软骨/骨形成的CT生物反应器研究，以及(c)软骨/骨形成的pixe生物反应器研究。预期的科学影响将是通过多尺度非侵入性定量成像的发展，对骨形成有重要的新见解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Engineering of bone, cartilage, and osteochondral tissue offers promising alternative approaches for regenerative medicine as well as tools to study skeletal tissue developmental processes and disease models. To understand the electrotherapeutic factors and advance healing of musculoskeletal tissues, one needs to develop modalities for non-invasive, quantitative, multiscale imaging of the forming tissues. To date, there has not been a bioreactor system that allows real-time monitoring of clinically sized engineered tissues without sacrificing the samples or interfering with the cultivating condition, principally due to the size and portability of the culture system, and the fact that imaging systems are usually located in a separate facility. We propose to develop a new bioreactor system, which incorporates non-destructive imaging techniques to monitor bone, cartilage, and osteochondral tissue development in vitro. Our goal is to integrate separate efforts of two laboratories specializing in tissue engineering and radiological imaging toward the development of a portable, imaging- compatible bioreactor enabling quantitative on-line studies of complex cartilage/bone tissue constructs. We will rigorously test this hypothesis by studying bone formation by endochondral and intramembraneous ossification on a microscopic to macroscopic level. Three specific aims will be pursued: (a) Development of a portable bioreactor integrated with imaging, (b) ¿CT bioreactor studies of cartilage/bone formation, and (c) ¿-PIXE bioreactor studies of cartilage/bone formation. The anticipated scientific impact will be in significant new insights into bone formation through the development of non-invasive quantitative imaging at multiple scales.