Sacrificial Templated Grafts to Encourage Bone Healing Through Mechanotransduction
Project Summary
Loss of large volumes of bone tissue often occurs as a result of traumatic injuries or cancerous resection.
Such injuries, especially in the head, jaws, and neck are challenging to surgeons and the long- and short-term
complications as well as the quality of life for these patients are often affected due to alteration in facial aesthetics
and features, speech, mastication, and breathing. To overcome these complications, current clinical alternatives
include grafting of bone with associated vascular bundles obtained from a secondary site. All these treatments
require multiple clinical interventions and often result in increased pain or donor site morbidity for the patients.
In this study, single-surgical step synthetic graft alternatives with controlled mechano-modulation through
compliance changes within the scaffold as well as a concerted delivery of cell migration factors to enhance bone
regeneration will be developed. As such, the 2 aims for this project are 1) to develop a chemoattractant
incorporated bone graft substitute with engineered degradation zones while retaining its mechanical integrity for
functional stabilization, and 2) to assess controlled temporal degradation under physiologically relevant
conditions in vitro and mechanisms of osteogenic and angiogenic signaling through mechanotransduction and
Ca2+ coupled pathways. Data collected from the in vitro and in vivo studies will guide the development of this
novel graft and provide an established platform to study the effects of local micromechanical factors and release
of recruitment factors to promote fracture healing and bone regeneration without need for extensive bone fixation
instrumentation.