This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
0854149/0853668 Goldstein/Hahn
The design of clinically effective materials for the surgical repair of ruptured ligaments remains a challenging biomedical engineering problem. Currently, tissue grafts from the patient and cadaveric sources are the only clinically effective materials for repair, as synthetic materials fatigue under cyclic loading. However, intrinsic limitations with these tissue sources include donor site complications and risk of disease transmission. An alternative approach to form functional ligament tissue - by combining a population of the patient's own adult stem cells with an oriented nanofiber scaffold - has been proposed, but is hindered by three technological constraints: 1) nanofiber scaffolds produced by electrospinning do not have the appropriate shape and size for ligament reconstruction, 2) cells do not migrate into electrospun scaffolds, and 3) adult stem cells do not readily form a robust collagen-rich extracellular matrix (ECM). Therefore, the specific goals of this project are to establish a methodology to process electrospun scaffolds into three-dimensional structures, implement co-electrospinning to facilitate cell penetration into scaffolds, and to employ cyclic uniaxial stretch to enhance deposition of a ligament-like ECM. The novelty of this project is that it seeks to create new technologies that can be used to fabricate engineered ligament tissues.
The intellectual merits of this project are three-fold. First, it will establish novel methodologies to process electrospun scaffolds into three dimensional scaffolds, while ensuring cell penetration. Second, it will identify dynamic mechanical stimuli regimens that induce gene expression and the synthesis of ligament ECM proteins. Third, the objectives of this project are fundamental, and the new technologies that will be developed can be applied generally to the engineering of oriented soft tissues (e.g., peripheral nerve, blood vessel, muscle). Thus, successful completion of this project would significantly advance the field of tissue engineering.
The broader impacts of this project include the development and implementation of a new K-12 outreach module "Healing Biomaterials" for Virginia Tech summer engineering camps, and the design of a new module for the undergraduate "Tissue Engineering and Drug Delivery" course at Texas A&M University. In addition, the work will be incorporated into the module "Biomimetic Approaches to Tissue Engineering" to be presented annually at the International Workshop and Summer School "Bioinspired Materials: Biomimetic Design and Assembly" in Lugano, Switzerland
