Epibone: bone culture with stem cells, a reduction of 900000 operations a year

Source: Lei Fengwang 2014-11-14 introduction: every year, about 900000 Americans will undergo bone related surgery, which is slow and painful Nina Tandon, a biomedical engineering student at Columbia University, uses stem cells and a special type of culture dish to grow durable living bones that can be used on patients to help shorten surgery and recovery time If you've ever had a fracture, you should know that the recovery process is slow and painful Imagine that in the future you don't need a long operation or splint to recover from a fracture / fracture Instead, now that you're in the same situation, your doctor may tell you that surgery or even bone transplantation is needed, which involves taking bones from other places to fill the gaps in your bones caused by injuries You have a choice: allow the surgeon to cut a bone from another part of you or remove a bone from the victim Both are at risk: bones taken from someone else can carry disease, so doctors have to be careful to identify donors Transplanting from your own body can still cause rejection, pain, infection and even nerve damage Nina Tandon wants to get rid of these two options and instead, she wants to help the bones grow on their own From your own cells to bone of exact shape and size Her company, called epibone, is close to that reality Epibone uses stem cells and a special type of culture dish to grow durable living bones But the road ahead will be very challenging So far, only a small number of bones grown in the laboratory have been tested in animals, and some comprehensive studies on the long-term effects of such bones on human body have yet to be completed "New assembly" a long time ago, Nina Tandon, who was only seven years old at that time, took apart the picture tube TV her parents bought out of love, understood the function of each part and reassembled it together With her founding epibone, Nina Tandon, 34, is still working to reassemble things, but this time it's not facing electrodes and wires, it's facing body parts As a student of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, Nina Tandon began to study human tissue In 2013, she used newborn heart cells and electrical stimulation to create a 5mm × 5mm beating engineered heart tissue Now she uses stem cells to build bones for individuals Every year, about 900000 Americans undergo bone related surgery For some people, because they have experienced severe trauma, bone cancer or congenital defects, they need to receive relevant operations What are the major changes in the early operation and postoperative recovery during the treatment of epibone First, Tandon and her team will perform CT scans of bone defects to get their exact size and shape Then, using a method similar to liposuction, they extract stem cells from the patient's fat The cells used by epibone are called pluripotent stem cells, which means they can grow into many different tissues, including bones The main advantage of epibone is that its "material" comes from the human body's own cells, which means that the bone grown from it is less likely to be rejected than the bone made from foreign bone or artificial material Once the patient's stem cells are obtained, epibone will place them in a special culture dish or bioreactor, where they will grow along a specific framework According to Tandon, the bioreactor will provide stem cells with all the nutrients they need When the cell reaches three to four weeks, the bone can be customized Because every bone grown by epibone can be customized, it can be placed exactly where it needs to be, and the tight fit can help shorten the operation and recovery time Warren Grayson, a biomedical engineer who challenged Johns Hopkins University, has been engaged in tissue engineering research in the laboratory He is also one of the shareholders of epibone In the first round of research, he proved that bone grown from stem cells can "work" normally after being transplanted into the organism His team successfully cultured stem cells from adipose tissue into human jawbones The first challenge is getting federal approval Although Tandon has shown that her products blend perfectly in animals, she has not yet tested them in humans The U.S Food and Drug Administration usually requires years of scrutiny before approving a drug, but because epibone is a living technology, the hurdle could be even greater if the federal government agrees The second is cost Because every time the epibone is transplanted, it has to be customized according to the patient's own stem cells and injuries, which may be very expensive A 2012 study found that laboratory bone culture costs between $10000 and $15000, about three to four times the cost of traditional methods How to develop Tandon's technology can be implemented in the human body in the next 5-10 years, but there are still many problems to be solved from now until then Up to now, epibone has not been tested in human body, but the technology of using stem cells to grow bone has been proved in 7 clinical studies Because a large number of technologies and research are the results of a long time ago, it is difficult for scientists to determine that the existing technology can reach the same or better level with the previous research results Most of the studies are very small, and researchers cannot often compare the effectiveness of patients who participated in their studies with those who received traditional surgery or did not have surgery For some early studies, researchers were also unable to maintain long-term communication with patients Tandon's team plan is to test their products for the first time in 18 months in human patients In the meantime, they must prove that the technology is feasible They will do more tests in the next year and a half and try to build larger, more complex bones.