Surgical repair of critically sized bone defects occurs 2 million times per year. Those defects are typically filled with autologous bone implants. However, due to the inability to maintain the viability of such large bone implants, their essential functionality for tissue healing and regeneration is largely lost, leading to failure of the bone healing process. This leads to costly reoperations, and even then, the risk of failure remains high: in complex lower limb fractures, more than 10% result in amputation.
Large bone implants rely on passive diffusion of nutrients due to the absence of functional vasculature. This causes implanted tissues to starve and inevitably fail. To address this, the team proposes that tissues must supply their own nutrients to remain viable. They call this novel concept self-feeding. This is made possible through the innovative use of nutritional nanoparticles that deliver nutrients on demand, triggered by cell-initiated enzymatic degradation.
It is the first approach that does not rely on xenogeneic enzymes, and thus operating in an unprecedented stable, continuous, and self-reliant manner. This drastically increases survival times and tissue performance compared to alternative strategies, representing a revolutionizing strategy for bone healing.
Within the Biotech Booster program, the Nutritional Bio-Nanoparticles Team will evaluate the market and regulatory processes to transition their solution towards the market and the patient.
