Orthopaedic Research Spotlight: ORS 2017 Annual Meeting

A guest blog post by RoosterBio Travel Award winner, Poonam Sharma.

The annual Orthopaedic Research Society meeting was an energetic and collaborative conference attended by clinicians, industry professionals, and researchers. While the attendees brought diverse perspectives to this meeting, the varied presentation styles, such as short poster teasers, mid-length research talks, and longer, broader spotlight oral presentations helped bring the audience together in scientific discourse. With over 300 oral presentations and over 2200 poster presentations, the variety in presentation styles made ORS 2017 an engaging and dynamic conference to attend.

Knockdown of vimentin may affect chondrogenic
extracellular matrix deposition in high density pellets.
shVim-vimentinknockdown, shLacZ-control.

My research in Dr. Adam H. Hsieh’s Orthopaedic Mechanobiology Lab at the University of Maryland centers on the role of vimentin intermediate filaments in governing mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) properties and behavior, including cellular deformability, adhesion, and differentiation, specifically chondrogenesis. After knocking down the expression of vimentin intermediate filaments in human MSCs using RNA interference, we observe how a decrease in vimentin affects differentiation (abstract here). Preliminarily, we’ve found that a decrease in vimentin did not affect adipogenesis or osteogenesis, but may lead to a potential decrease in chondrogenic extracellular matrix deposition, but this needs further exploration. MSCs from RoosterBio have been singular in the progression of my graduate research. The fast growth and consistency of the high quality MSCs have taken the bottleneck of MSC growth out of the equation for my research. Further, using these MSCs and media has dramatically decreased the labor, time, and resources needed to obtain the cell numbers needed for conducting my experiments.

During this conference, I was able to have in-depth conversations about my research as well as exchange ideas and technical tips that will help strengthen my work. Attending ORS allowed me to both present my research through a poster presentation and network with both industry professionals and academic researchers. As I will soon be taking the next step in my career, these interactions helped me to start to home in on the types of opportunities that I would like to pursue and how to prepare myself to excel. Further, attending professional development seminars, such as one regarding the art of negotiation, helped me identify techniques for further developing soft skills.   

One of the most engaging sessions in this conference was a really fun debate about the related futures of regenerative medicine and orthopaedic implants – Will Regenerative Medicine Make Orthopaedic Implants Obsolete in Our Time? It was captivating to hear the discussion about two research and clinical areas that continue to intersect and diverge. Also, the keynote by Dr. Jennifer Doudna summarizing the CRISPR technology that she helped develop was a great overview and the brief discussion about the ethics of gene therapy was thought-provoking.

The research presentations and broader spotlight sessions gave me a great overview of the latest research in my interest areas of regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, cell therapies, and biomaterials. Many of the oral presentations I attended focused on bettering the design of tissue engineered scaffolds. Here are just a few of the research presentations that inspired me:

At the Cutting Edge of 3D Bioprinting: WBC 2016 Round Up Part II

A guest blog post by RoosterBio Travel Award winner, Ian Kinstlinger.

Presenting on Open-source Selective Laser 

Sintering at WBC2016!

Since 1980, the international community of biomaterials scientists and engineers has convened every four years to discuss the cutting edge of biomaterials research. This year’s 10^th World Biomaterials Congress (WBC) brought us to lovely Montreal, Canada for a stimulating week of workshops, talks, posters, and social activities. I was honored to present my work from the Miller Lab at Rice University in both a podium talk and a poster session.

Our lab is broadly interested in developing strategies to construct vascular networks within engineered tissues. In my research, I have developed a platform technology which uses 3D printed carbohydrates as templates around which cells and biomaterials can be assembled. Dissolving the sugar away gives you an engineered tissue with perfusable channels; we believe that these constructs will be useful for understanding the mass transport requirements and emergent properties of engineered living tissue.

An overview of one method our lab has introduced to create 

embedded vascular networks in biomaterials.

I used my poster to spread the word about our lab’s Open-source Selective Laser Sintering technology and my podium talk to describe how we’ve adapted this system to perform laser-based 3D printing of carbohydrate materials. I was thrilled to have a large audience for my talk, followed by several insightful questions. My poster also received a steady stream of visitors, many of whom are involved in the open-source hardware community and were eager to talk about hardware hacking for biomaterials. That work was actually published earlier this year – and RoosterBio hMSCs were absolutely central. Their high quality and robust differentiation response made characterizing biocompatibility of materials quite straightforward.

A couple of key presentations stood out at WBC 2016:

Nano- and Micro-fabricated Hydrogels for Regenerative Engineering

• Dr. Ali Khademhosseini, Khademhosseini Lab, Harvard University
•  Dr. Khademhosseini gave an illuminating keynote on the many angles from which his lab is using bioprinting technologies to fabricate functional biological structures. He is also emerging as a leader in the field of integrated organ-on-chip drug screening platforms.

Injection of Dual-Crosslinking Hydrogels to Limit Infarct Induced Left Ventricular Remodeling

• Dr. Jason Burdick, Polymeric Biomaterials Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania
•  The Burdick lab has developed an innovative class of supramolecular biomaterials specifically targeted for 3D printing applications. The gels are shear-thinning due to their non-covalent crosslinks, and thus are amenable to extrusion printing. These materials are also useful as injectables for reducing left ventricular remodeling after heart attack.

Photoreversible patterning of hydrogel biomaterials with site-specifically-modified proteins

• Dr. Cole DeForest,  DeForest Research Group, University of Washington
•  Much like our lab is interested in patterning biomaterial architecture via 3D printing, the DeForest group is patterning functional proteins into materials through some very clever photochemistries. Their techniques give them spatiotemporal control over the incorporation of various full proteins into synthetic hydrogels.

It was tremendously exciting to see so many investigators working on 3D printing of biomaterials. I counted at least seven sessions devoted to the topic and was also impressed by the low-cost printers and inks now hitting the market, including RoosterBio’s new ready-to-print hMSC products. The diverse hardware and materials that have been introduced in the past few years are already transforming the field! It will be very interesting to see in the coming years whether these new techniques give way to novel insights into cell and tissue function in vitro, as many groups are currently promising.

It is also not yet clear whether the same groups who are mastering the materials and fabrication technology have the resources and expertise to analyze complex biological phenomena in their printed structures. A greater level of collaboration between biologists and materials/fabrication engineers may be necessary in the future to make progress in this area. I am going to end with shameless plug for my recent review article in Lab on a Chip which discusses 3D printing approaches for fabricating vascular networks and addresses the need for increased communication between biologists and materials scientists.

WBC 2016 was an incredible conference in which I got to present my work, learn about key advances in biomaterials, meet leaders in the field, and explore Montreal. Thanks so much to RoosterBio for providing the highest quality hMSCs and for their support of my work through a travel grant! 

ORS 2016 Annual Meeting Round-Up

A guest post by RoosterBio Travel Award winner, Katherine Hudson. 

Rocking some RoosterBio swag!

The Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Annual Meeting brings together clinicians, scientists, and engineers dedicated to addressing the current challenges facing orthopaedic research. With over 2,200 abstracts being presented, it can be a difficult landscape to navigate. Luckily, the organizers make it easy to connect with researchers with similar interests while still facilitating expanded horizons.

My research focuses on tissue engineering of the intervertebral disc (IVD), using mechanical and chemical cues to encourage Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) differentiation and tissue maturation within my constructs. This subject spans the topics of stem cell biology, biomaterial development, and in vivo preclinical trials, making the ORS a perfect place to present my work. Attending the ORS meeting allowed me to accomplish many things including sharing my most recent work, networking with potential employers and collaborators, and learning about the latest scientific developments and techniques.

During the conference, my posters received plenty of traffic, which extended the impact of my findings. Both posters challenge traditional tissue engineering paradigms, and my aim was to make other tissue engineers aware of the potential benefits of culturing (and expanding) MSCs in hypoxia, and immunophenotyping cells before and after their use in 3D scaffolds (See my ORS abstracts here and here for details). Additionally, I was able to get valuable feedback on my research that will make my upcoming dissertation stronger.

The ORS encourages and facilitates networking with both clinicians and other scientists. While at the conference, I met with researchers from across the country, and even interviewed for postdoctoral positions, the next step after I finish my PhD work this May. Through these discussions and the presentation sessions organized by the ORS, I was exposed to the latest research in my current and proposed fields of study. This included the newest cell culture techniques, evaluation tools, and IVD biology.

Although I am biased towards tissue engineering and development, I feel that these topics were the highlight of the ORS meeting this year. The source of cells used in regenerative therapies, be they primary or stem cells, was a focus throughout the conference. Additionally, novel biomaterials and stimulation techniques to drive the behavior of cells was a focus. It is important that researchers understand the structure of orthopaedic tissues and their failure modes over multiple scales before we can truly develop successful repair and regeneration strategies. Appropriate cells types and materials facilitate these studies.

Some presentations that stood out to me:

At the Cutting-Edge of Regenerative Medicine: Bioengineering Human-Sized Bone

Fisher et al published the first attempt at engineering

a full-scale adult human femur head from hMSCs.  This

is the largest reported tissue to have been engineered

and took over 700 million hMSCs to fabricate.

John Fisher’s laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park recently published what can be considered a significant advance for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. Graduate student Bao Nguyen and her colleagues have engineered a bone construct that is 20 times larger than any reported previously, and the size of an adult human femur.

Why is this important? Critical size bone defects are a significant health problem (resulting in over $1 billion in annual healthcare costs incurred in the U.S.) and are currently treated with grafts, decellularized bone, or synthetic bone grafts, with sometimes unsucessful results. As such, modern medicine has been looking to tissue engineered bone grafts as future treatments for such defects. Human bone marrow-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hBM-MSCs) are a promising cell source for such applications because they efficiently differentiate down the osteogenic path and also secrete paracrine factors that may aid survival and vascularization of engineered bone. Prior to this publication, engineered constructs have been relatively small due to cell and culture limits.  One major challenge has been growing hBM-MSCs, while maintaining their function, to sufficient numbers needed for an adult human-sized construct; a challenge adressed by RoosterBio.  In addition, nutrient and O₂ transfer are often insufficient to maintain cell viability and function throughout larger constructs, especially those of adult human dimension.

To address this cell culture limitation, the Fisher laboratory developed a Tubular Perfusion System (TPS) bioreactor where cells and scaffolds are cultured in a cylindrical chamber and subject to circular media flow. This system has high nutrient and O₂ transfer and efficient waste removal and has been previously used to produce smaller engineered bone and cartilage constructs (See here and here).

In the study detailed here, the authors had access to and combined, for the first time, advanced technologies required for biofabrication: 3D printing, the TPS bioreactor, and scalable production of hBM-MSCs. The goal of the study was to scale-up bone constructs to adult human size. A full size mold of the superior portion of a human femur (the largest bone in the human body) was 3D printed using information from an opensource database. The mold measured 23 cm long and 10 cm at its widest point with a volume of  200 cm³. The mold was filled with hBM-MSCs in alginate beads (3 mm beads, 100,000 cells per bead). The entire construct utlillized 7200 aliginate beads containing a total of 7.2 x 10⁸ cells (yes, that is 720 million cells!). The high volume hBM-MSC cell and media systems used were from RoosterBio, and technical support for the efficient production of large volumes of hBM-MSCs was provided by our company.

After 8 days of culture in the TPS, the construct was examined for cell viability and bone differentiation. High cell viability was seen in all parts of the construct, both on the outside and the inside (interior). In addition, hBM-MSCs committed to the osteogenic lineage throughout the construct, demonstrating efficiency of the TPS culture system. Both early (Alkaline Phosphotase, ALP) and late (Bone Morphogenic Protein-2, BMP-2) markers of osteogenesis were upregulated relative to day 0. Interestingly, ALP and BMP-2 expression was 25- to 30-fold higher in the construct shaft relative to other portions of the construct. The authors speculate that this is due to shear stress exerted on the parts of the construct closest to the inlet, which activates hBM-MSC signaling pathways, causing release of paracrine factors that stimulate osteogenesis of the “downstream” shaft portion. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the confluence of cutting-edge technologies such as 3D printing, TPS bioreactors, and best-in-class hBM-MSC manufacturing processes enable the engineering of adult human-sized tissue constructs.

While “…this first foray into full-scale bone engineering provides the foundation for future clinical applications of bioengineered bone grafts…” the authors point out some limitations to this study. The 8 day culture period was relatively short, given the weeks usually needed for high efficiency bone differentiation. Thus, extended time points and the fabrication of additional large constructs are needed to fully explore the capabilities of the TPS system. Further, alginate is a soft material, and its mechanical properties do not render it the best suited for bone differentiation.  In addition, hBM-MSCs within aliginate beads lack cell:cell contact, which may also limit their osteogenic differentiation.  To address these limitations of the current system, the Fisher group is developing a 3D printed shell made of an implantable rigid material better suited for the engineering of bone constructs.  Finally, the construct lacks a vascular network, which can be overcome by including endothelial cells (EC) in addition to hBM-MSCs or by incorporating micro-channels in the engineered constructs through a variety of methods (e.g. biomaterial fabrication and 3D printing). Despite the aforementioned limitations, the work presented is a significant advance towards clinical-sized tissue-engineered bone constructs for use in patients.

In an attempt to elicit discussion, I will mention other methods that harbor potential for use in such large-scale tissue engineering applications. For one, hBM-MSC aggregates could be used in place of cells in alginate beads. These 3D-MSC not only maintain cell:cell contact but also undergo osteogenic differentiation more efficiently than cells grown on tissue culture plastic, are resistant to hypoxia, and secrete angiogenic cytokines. Secondly, factors that stimulate bone differentiation of hBM-MSCs, and/or alter mechanical properties of the construct, could be incorporated into the polymer scaffolding, or could be introduced into 3D-MSC aggregates. Finally, once bio-inks are developed further, the bone construct could be patterned by 3D printing of cells (hBM-MSC, EC, 3D-MSC) and materials.  Now that human-sized constructs are possible in terms of cell numbers and O₂ and nutrient diffusion, the possibilities are virtually endless.

Finally, we sincerely thank Bao Nguyen and John Fisher for being early adopters of RoosterBio hBM-MSCs and joining us in accelerating Regenerative Medicine!

References:

Nguyen BB, Ko H, Moriarty RA, Etheridge JM, Fisher JP. Dynamic Bioreactor Culture of High Volume Engineered Bone Tissue. Tissue Engineering Part A. Volume 22, Numbers 3 and 4, 2016, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/ten.tea.2015.0395.  http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.tea.2015.0395 

I’m sorry that this is paywalled!

Yeatts, A.B., and Fisher, J.P. Tubular perfusion system for the long-term dynamic culture of human mesenchymal stem cells. Tissue Eng Part C 17, 337, 2011.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.tec.2011.0263

Yeatts, A.B., Choquette, D.T., and Fisher, J.P. Bioreactors to influence stem cell fate: augmentation of mesenchymal stem cell signaling pathways via dynamic culture systems. Biochim Biophys Acta 1830, 2470, 2013.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461086/

Ma, X et al. Deterministically patterned biomimetic human iPSC-derived hepatic model via rapid 3D bioprinting  PNAS, Early Edition doi: 10.1073/pnas.1524510113 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/02/04/1524510113

See you at MSC 2015?

MSC 2015 is quickly approaching next month and we at RoosterBio are getting ready.  This conference is arguably the single most important conference related to MSCs, and Cleveland is the considered by many to be the birthplace of the current paradigm of MSCs used in therapeutic contexts.  We will be sending most of our company, and we do look forward to seeing everyone there. Not only is this conference full of great sessions and talks, but the networking at this bi-yearly MSC conference is always top notch and yet another reason to attend.

The faculty and sessions at MSC 2015 are hyper-relevant to today’s more important topics, and the sessions are organized by several key themes.  Day 1 of the conference will be kicked off with a Keynote from Arnold Caplan , the godfather of MSCs (and yes, if you Google “MSC Godfather” you get Arnold Caplan), who is always entertaining and insightful to where MSC technology is going. The sessions look to be focused on Clinical Trial updates by the likes of Athersys, Katerina LeBlanc, Dan Weiss and Jacques Galipeau, among others. 

Day 2 of the conference gets kicked off with a keynote from Frank Barry from The National University of Ireland at Galway, and he will be speaking on MSC Translation.  My favorite topic, MSC BioManufacturing, will be covered that morning, and we all know that MSC technology cannot be translated into humans without consistent, robust and cost effective manufacturing processes that are capable of maintaining the quality parameters and functions of these critical cells.  Sessions on MSCs in applications like cardiology and organ transplantation will follow, and the day will end with the session I am most excited about – Next Generation MSCs.  Jan Nolta and Mike West will highlight this “not to miss” session.

The final day of the conference will have a keynote from Stanton Gerson, followed by many new and impactful applications including MSCs in Cancer and Sepsis.  The last two sessions are on potentially the most impactful translational areas of MSCs (as it pertains with shear numbers of patients treated), which are the use in Sports Medicine and Veterinary Sciences.  I will bet that Bob Harman at Vet Stem has treated more patients with MSCs than any other clinic or company in the World – and I plan on asking him what that number is at the conference, so look for it in our Twitter feed.

It does look like the dedicated organizing team at Case has done a great job at organizing yet another stellar event, and we look forward to seeing you there.  Be sure to stop by our Booth and posters and say hello!

An Open Letter to the Builders of the Cell-based BioEconomy

Dear Stem Cell Pioneer:

February marks the one year anniversary of RoosterBio shipping our first stem cell products to our valued customers, and I personally am very excited for the coming year ahead. We look forward to delivering even more high quality stem cells to people like you that are doing amazing things.

Looking forward into 2015 and beyond, I want to make sure we are staying true to our mission: to greatly increase the availability and accessibility of stem cell technology to researchers and product developers across the globe – and that we are committed to our vision of accelerating the pace of product development in the cellular therapy, bioprinting and tissue engineering markets.  I am hoping to focus our efforts to making sure that we are moving your discoveries and developments forward faster than anticipated.  This will not just be a win for our customers and RoosterBio, but for the entire Regenerative Medicine field.

In 2014 after launching our hMSCs in the unprecedented product format of 10 million cell vials to glowing reviews, we quickly implemented our Starter Kits and Working Cell Bank formats based on your feedback.  These new formats allow for accelerated testing, performance verification, and standardized small scale experimentation with reproducible outcomes.  We also initiated multiple collaborations with leaders in the tissue engineering and biofabrication fields – which has led to multiple conference posters, presentations, and soon to be submitted publications.

We also find ourselves at the precipice of a boom in biofabrication technologies, and we consider this the beginning of the Golden Age of Tissue Engineering.  I anticipate great progress will be made at an increasingly rapid pace.  Now that many of the tools required for bioprinting are becoming “democratized” (simpler, less expensive, more accessible) such as 3D BioPrinters, biomaterials, and primary cells – laboratories can get up and running in a matter of weeks with limited initial resources, something that would have taken months to years and extensive capital in the past.  We are at a special time, and the entire field will be accelerating forward at a rapid pace, making biofabrication truly an exponential medical technology.

2015 will truly be an exciting year for RoosterBio.  We will be participating in a Stem Cell Manufacturing Training Program, helping to organize several conferences on Cell Therapy BioProcessing and BioPrinting, exhibiting at multiple conferences, as well are contributing to initiatives such as the Georgia Tech Cell Manufacturing Consortium and the NIST Workshop on Strategies to Achieve Measurement Assurance for Cell Therapy Products.  The primary motivation behind these initiatives are to make sure that we are driving forward our vision and delivering on our mission.

None of this would be possible without the hard work and dedication of the entire RoosterBio team, as well as the support that we are getting from you, our valued customers.  Please continue to join us on our journey as we accelerate the development of the Cell-based BioEconomy.

All the best from Frederick, Maryland.


Jon A Rowley
Chief Executive & Technology Officer
RoosterBio Inc.

The Rise of BioFabrication and BioPrinting in Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine – notes from TERMIS 2014 Annual Meeting

RoosterBio participated in the annual Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society’s Annual Meeting of the Americas chapter (or TERMIS-AM for short) in Dec 2014.  You can find a lot of content on the meeting at the conference website where you can download the program for free, as well as read the published abstracts in the journal Tissue Engineering.  The final registration numbers for the 2014 TERMIS-AM conference in DC was 842 (about a 7% increase over last year’s conference).  There were 30 countries represented at the conference, with a total of 202 oral presentations and 338 poster presentations (Stats from Sarah Wilburn at the TERMIS head office).  We are looking forward to the 2015 TERMIS World Congress, which will be in Boston in early September, 2015.

There were two striking trends that were gleaned from the conference that I wanted to outline over a couple of blog posts.  First, there was a noticeable rise in the number (and quality) of the Biofabrication-related talks and posters (this blog post will focus on this).  The second trend to note was the rise in Product Development content at the 2014 meeting – and this will be the focus of a subsequent blog post.  Interestingly, the intersection of these two topics (manufacturing process technologies and product development) has traditionally been crucial for the successful commercialization of high tech products, including biopharmaceuticals (see recent HBR article by Pisano and Shih here).  

Our favorite booth (after the RoosterBio booth, or course) was BioBots', who were
showing off the beta version of the BioBot Rapid 3D Bio-Prototyper.

The Rise of BioFabrication and BioPrinting in Tissue Engineering

TERMIS has always been a great conference for academic Tissue Engineering technologies.  The major comment that I always heard from fellow industrialists was just how “academically” focused the conference was.  Meaning that the

Best Practices in MSC R&D: Addressing Donor Variability within your Experimental System

Human MSCs are the single most used cell source for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications, and clinical trials involving hMSCs have outpaced all other cell types in recent years (see here and here).  However, despite indications of clinical effectiveness (see here and here), there is repeated news of the failure of high-profile MSC trials to demonstrate efficacy in a number of therapeutic applications (see here, here, here, here and here).  It has been suggested that the large amount of intra- and inter-donor variability in the MSC populations used in these trials may be responsible for their falling short of expectations despite highly encouraging in vitro and in vivo pre-clinical data.

A team led by Steve Bauer at the US FDA has reported that large variations in proliferation, morphology, differentiation capacity, and cell surface marker expression profiles exist within any population of MSCs and that these intra-population heterogeneities may arise as a result of long-term in vitro culture and the in vivo microenvironment (Free article available here.)  In addition, their work has demonstrated that there are inherent differences in MSCs from donors of similar age, and they have noted the “potential for other donor-related factors in MSC biological variability, which may play a role in their clinical usefulness or performance in various model systems.” Other research groups have also corroborated donor-related differences in MSC function, including in response to stimuli, such as challenge with inflammatory cytokines (see here and here).  A review article on developing cell therapy manufacturing processes reinforces that several donors should be tested prior to implementing; 1) changes in media composition (such as serum reduction/elimination or addition of growth supplements), 2) extensions of the product dose population doubling level (PDL), or 3) changes in lot size during scale-up.

MSCs as the Workhorse of Regenerative Medicine - Part II - Orthopaedic Roundup

MSCs truly are the Workhorse of Regenerative Medicine, and their use in Orthopaedic applications is where clinical translation was initially imagined.  However, the robust signaling activity of MSCs has widened the range of clinical indications to include cardiac, vascular, and neurological regeneration, as well as immunological applications (eg. GVHD, Chron’s disease), and more recently, cancer therapies.  

It is thus not surprising that MSCs were a strong component of the annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in New Orleans, LA in March.  We were fortunate enough to attend this conference and see the vast amount of work being conducted in the orthopaedic tissue engineering arena.  Not surprising to us, there were many presentations on the use of MSCs for musculoskeletal tissue repair and regeneration.  Below is some of the MSC research that caught our eye.

ORS 2014 abstracts can be downloaded here.

Orthopaedics, Image from: http://healthcare.utah.edu/orthopaedics/images/body_skeleton.png.

Tissue Engineered Periosteum Approaches to Heal Bone Allograft Transplants 

• Michael Hoffman, Benoit Lab, University of Rochester
• Transplantation of decellularized bone allografts seeded with both undifferentiated MSCs and MSCs differentiated to the osteogenic lineage lead to modulation of VEGF production and an increase in BMP2 production that resulted in an increase in torsional biomechanical graft host stability and rate of endochondral ossification compared to allograft alone and allograft seeded with undifferentiated MSCs alone.
• A related publication can be found here.

Anatomically Shaped, Vascularized Bone Grafts for Craniomaxillofacial Reconstruction

• Joshua Temple, Grayson Lab, Johns Hopkins University
• 3D printed porous scaffolds with correct anatomical features were successfully created to regenerate complex craniofacial deformities. Scaffolds containing adipose MSC aggregates formed extensive vascular networks as well as bone.  Implanted scaffolds demonstrated patent human vasculature and bone formation.
• A related publication can be found here.

Anatomic Hypertrophic Cartilaginous Grafts For Whole Bone Tissue Engineering

• Eamon Sheehy, Kelly Lab, Trinity College, Dublin
• Alginate, chitosan and fibrin hydrogels seeded with MSCs were investigated for bone formation through endochondral ossification.  While all constructs underwent robust chondrogenesis in vitro, alginate supported the greatest degree of endochondral bone formation in vivo, with the establishment of a hematopoietic marrow component with evidence of blood vessel infiltration. Subsequently, anatomically correct, MSC-seeded alginate hydrogels were used as the osseous layer of an engineered phalanx construct, which successfully underwent spatially regulated endochondral ossification in vivo.
• A related publication can be found here.