Bone Tissue Engineering
In podcast #13, we talk with Professor Jöns Hilborn and Dr. Ivan Martin, two experts in bone tissue engineering who attended the 2006 Regenerate World Congress in April.
Professor Hilborn of the Department of Materials Chemistry at Sweden’s Uppsala University is engineering cells to produce customized extracellular matrices, which his lab uses as scaffolds to guide the growth of new bone – eventually for the repair of skull and dental defects in humans. Professor Hilborn’s lab also develops new biomaterials that better match the natural tissues in which they are implanted. Finally, Professor Hilborn discusses the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS), which he serves as President-Elect.
Dr. Martin of the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland uses a bioreactor – a sort of incubator – to encourage the generation of cartilage and bone. In a clinical trial soon to start, Dr. Martin’s team will seed ceramic particles with patients’ own bone marrow-derived progenitor cells, nurture them inside a bioreactor, then use the material to repair damaged disks in the spine. Dr. Martin hopes to expand this approach so that it can be used to span large bone breaks and defects, and he has an ambitious plan to make affordable bioreactors a standard part of the orthopedist’s toolbox.
Hosts Leah Kauffman and John Murphy. Interview by Leah Kauffman.
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