New biodegradable nanocompound for bone regeneration

3 August 2010

Bones are the vital parts of the body and whenever a partial damage to the bone occurs, bones have a property to regenerate themselves. However if in many cases when serious break occurs, bones takes longer time to regenerate and keeping this in mind, bone tissue engineers are continuously working towards the development of new material that induce the bone regeneration and disappears as soon as the bone recover.

Ms. Beatriz Olade, research scholar at the Health Unit of Tecnalia is working towards the development of such compounds. She has recently developed a totally new porous compound that was capable to interact both chemically and electrically with the bone cells. The interaction with bone cells finally accelerated the bone recovery.

The researcher uses the polymer polylactic acid, a bioceramic hydroxyapatite and carbon nanotubes. Polymer polylactic acid has biodegradable properties and is widely used for medicinal purposes and the polymer disappears as soon as the bone grows. The bioceramic provides enough calcium to the cells and thus facilitates the growth and finally carbon nanotubes enhance mechanical properties to the polymer.

The trial carried out by Ms Olade resulted satisfactory results in both in vitro and in vivo experiments. The initial results are encouraging and bone growth was observed after 3 weeks and after 16 weeks, bone showed mechanical and other properties of bone similar to healthy bone tissues.

Related Posts: