Personalized scaffolds for bone defect regeneration

Research Focus

Additive Design

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly emerging technology that has the potential to produce personalized scaffolds for tissue engineering applications with unprecedented control over structural and functional design. Particularly for bone defect regeneration, the complex coupling of biological mechanisms to the scaffolds’ properties has led to a predominantly trial-and-error approach. To mitigate this, shape or topology optimization will be deployed to design a scaffold architecture that matches the desired design targets. This research takes place in collaboration with Prof. Patrick Dondl (University of Freiburg)

Scaffold-guided bone defect regeneration in disease models

The management of bone defects remains a major clinical challenge, particularly if defects are of critical size. Critical-sized defects do not heal and require in-depth planning of their treatment. Currently used therapeutic approaches include bone grafting, distraction osteogenesis, or the so-called “Masquelet” technique. There are clinical evidences to guide treatment strategies for critical-sized bone defects. Nonetheless, healing outcomes are highly variable dependent on the site and size of the defect and patient-related aspects (i.e. age, lifestyle, comorbid metabolic and systemic disorders). So far, bone defects treatments are similar in all patients despite population heterogeneity which result in different regenerative outcomes. Leveraging on network medicine approaches, we strive to better understand the mechanistic differences in scaffold-guided bone defect regeneration in different disease models, e.g. type 2 diabetes, chronological ageing, enabling the selection of the best possible scaffolds.