If organ and bone transplant were one wave of body repair, the next will be tissue engineering, growing personalized parts for replacement, and that future is already here, said the CEO of a company growing customized bone.
The Augusta Chronicle
4-25-14
By Tom Corwin
Dr. Nina Tandon of EpiBone gave a talk Friday at Georgia Regents University as part of the Drs. Robert and Lois Ellison Lecture Series. The revolutionary thing happening now is tissue engineering, said Tandon, whose doctorate is in biomedical engineering.
“Let’s engineer the right environment for those cells because if we do that then the cells, who are the real tissue engineers, will do all the work,” she said. Some of the more straightforward, less complex tissues, like skin and cartilage, can already be grown and are available for patients now, Tandon said.
“In my opinion, bone is poised to be the next tissue-engineered product to come on the market,” she said. In EpiBone’s case, it takes a scan of the bone defect to be replaced, creates an exact replica as a scaffold, and then covers it in stem cells taken from the patient’s fat to populate the bone and grow it inside a “bioreactor” that feeds it the right nutrition and applies the right force.
“At the end we have an anatomically precise patient-consistent bone that can be used to reconstruct” part of the body, Tandon said.
So far it is in animal testing such as pigs, where the EpiBone was used to replace part of the jaws of the pigs. Compared to a traditional bone graft, the EpiBone graft filled in better and while the traditional graft was degenerating after six months, “the Epibone is getting stronger over time,” Tandon said. It might also be used to address some of the traditional problems with other replacement therapies. Knee surgeries often fail at the site where the ligament is attached to the bone in part because the screws are made of metal, she said.
“What would be really cool is if the screws were made out of bone instead of metal,” Tandon said. “We’re just focusing on the bone right now. But I think down the line more complex tissues like bone plus cartilage or bone plus ligament are obvious extensions of what we’re doing.”
Hybrids of tissue engineering and stem cell therapy could solve other problems. For instance, stem cell therapy is being tried to heal damaged heart muscle, such as in a clinical trial that might begin soon at GRU, Tandon said.
“Everybody knows that the cells work. Nobody knows why,” she said. ”And nobody knows how to keep the cells that are working where they are supposed to be long enough for them to do their work.”
The answer might be a step between stem cells and engineered tissue, such as cells suspended in some kind of platform that could be applied to the damaged area, Tandon said.
“We need the healing cells to be almost like a living Band-Aid,” she said.
Tissue engineering also has the potential to make testing new drugs much cheaper and faster and could help reduce the need for testing on both animals and people, Tandon said.
“We’re very excited about how tissue engineering can disrupt not just how we replace parts of the body but also how we discover and test drugs,” she said.
The Augusta Chronicle
4-25-14
By Tom Corwin
Dr. Nina Tandon of EpiBone gave a talk Friday at Georgia Regents University as part of the Drs. Robert and Lois Ellison Lecture Series. The revolutionary thing happening now is tissue engineering, said Tandon, whose doctorate is in biomedical engineering.
“Let’s engineer the right environment for those cells because if we do that then the cells, who are the real tissue engineers, will do all the work,” she said. Some of the more straightforward, less complex tissues, like skin and cartilage, can already be grown and are available for patients now, Tandon said.
“In my opinion, bone is poised to be the next tissue-engineered product to come on the market,” she said. In EpiBone’s case, it takes a scan of the bone defect to be replaced, creates an exact replica as a scaffold, and then covers it in stem cells taken from the patient’s fat to populate the bone and grow it inside a “bioreactor” that feeds it the right nutrition and applies the right force.
“At the end we have an anatomically precise patient-consistent bone that can be used to reconstruct” part of the body, Tandon said.
So far it is in animal testing such as pigs, where the EpiBone was used to replace part of the jaws of the pigs. Compared to a traditional bone graft, the EpiBone graft filled in better and while the traditional graft was degenerating after six months, “the Epibone is getting stronger over time,” Tandon said. It might also be used to address some of the traditional problems with other replacement therapies. Knee surgeries often fail at the site where the ligament is attached to the bone in part because the screws are made of metal, she said.
“What would be really cool is if the screws were made out of bone instead of metal,” Tandon said. “We’re just focusing on the bone right now. But I think down the line more complex tissues like bone plus cartilage or bone plus ligament are obvious extensions of what we’re doing.”
Hybrids of tissue engineering and stem cell therapy could solve other problems. For instance, stem cell therapy is being tried to heal damaged heart muscle, such as in a clinical trial that might begin soon at GRU, Tandon said.
“Everybody knows that the cells work. Nobody knows why,” she said. ”And nobody knows how to keep the cells that are working where they are supposed to be long enough for them to do their work.”
The answer might be a step between stem cells and engineered tissue, such as cells suspended in some kind of platform that could be applied to the damaged area, Tandon said.
“We need the healing cells to be almost like a living Band-Aid,” she said.
Tissue engineering also has the potential to make testing new drugs much cheaper and faster and could help reduce the need for testing on both animals and people, Tandon said.
“We’re very excited about how tissue engineering can disrupt not just how we replace parts of the body but also how we discover and test drugs,” she said.