Innovative cell-based technologies for bone regeneration (REGENBONE)

The REGENBONE project aims to develop new methods of stimulating bone fracture repair that will shorten healing times and improve quality of care for patients suffering from difficult-to-heal fractures or spinal problems where fusion is required. The current gold standard treatment for these patients involves surgery to fix the fracture with metal instruments and implant bone grafted from the patient’s own body. However, such bone grafts, called autografts, can be associated with donor site complications such as infection and pain. In addition, where and how much bone tissue can be taken is limited, thus, obtaining sufficient tissue may be problematic. The REGENBONE project hopes to overcome these problems by using the patient’s own stem cells to develop a bone patch product that reduces the need for autografts whilst providing an equal or superior treatment in terms of safety and efficacy. Stem cell preparations are combined with a chemically-modified hydroxyapatite scaffold that accelerates healing of bone defects in humans, to determine whether the combination of stem cells with scaffold results in superior bone formation. Furthermore, the project aims to identify biomarkers that are predictive of bone forming potency of MSC-scaffold preparations, to allow for the standardisation and quality-control of such cell therapy which is vital for its routine clinical application in future.