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

在北美出生的婴儿中有5%有先天缺陷，其中四分之三涉及颅面复合体（头部、面部和口腔组织）。有数百种疾病影响着面部、颅骨、颌骨和牙齿。唇裂伴或不伴腭裂是最常见的一种（1:1000出生）。颅面缺损也可能由肿瘤切除和外伤引起。这些颅面疾病和缺陷的社会和经济成本是巨大的，它们给人口中的特定群体造成了沉重的负担。由于颅面缺陷导致的硬组织（骨或软骨）的损失是头颈部手术的严重问题。可用于这些患者的康复治疗有自体骨移植、同种异体骨移植和合成骨移植。合成骨水泥，如磷酸钙基骨水泥，是治疗颅面缺陷特别感兴趣的，因为它们可以被塑造成要修复的缺陷的形状。然而，对于较大的骨缺损（如因头颈癌、骨放射性坏死或腭裂而切除的骨缺损），单独使用生物材料或生物材料的组合都不能完全再生这些丢失的组织。我们建议测试新一代的“基于细胞的混合生物材料”，它可以将祖细胞输送到特定的颅面缺陷和疾病。我们提出的生物材料由3个主要成分组成：1)自体间充质祖细胞（从拔牙中分离）包被到2)海藻酸盐和3)磷酸钙胶结物中。

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.