This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop bioactive, high-strength contrast agents for use in orthopedic and bone implant applications. There is a clear clinical need for improved contrast agents that increase the strength, toughness and abrasion wear of bone-void fillers, improve its biocompatibility and ability to promote the growth of healthy bone at the bone/filler interface. The innovation addresses the current shortcomings and aims to produce contrast agents that improve the mechanical properties, fatigue life, wear abrasion, and bio-compatibility with living bone.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to increase the success rate of total joint replacement surgeries, increase the implant lifetime and reduce the rates of revision surgeries. Surgeries involving hip and knee replacements (and other surgeries utilizing bone-void fillers) are rapidly increasing world-wide, and the trend toward performing these surgeries on a younger patient population, who will more likely require replacement surgeries, portends a massive increase in their incidence in the coming decades.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project has sought to develop bioactive, high-strength contrast agents for use in orthopedic and bone implant applications. There is a clear clinical need for improved contrast agents that increase the strength, toughness and abrasion wear of bone-void or bone-graft materials, improve their biocompatibility and ability to promote the growth of healthy bone at the bone/implant interface. The innovation proposed aims to produce contrast agents that improve the mechanical properties, fatigue life, wear abrasion (a serious problem currently implicated in the failure mechanism of implants), ease of use and biocompatibility with living bone. This research, if successful, has potential to increase the surgical success rate, increase the implant lifetime and reduce the rates of revision surgeries. The research has clear commercial potential as it directly addresses documented problems associated with load-bearing, orthopedic implants. As a result of the Phase I research, Transparent Materials has developed a method for producing contrast agents that greatly improve the mechanical properties, fatigue life, wear abrasion and biocompatibility of implants. The company has shown feasibility for a materials strategy that allows it to uniquely produce inorganic nanocomposites that are simultaneously strong, radiopaque (can be seen by X-rays) and bioactive; this overcomes the limitations of current materials and will allow for biomedical composites that better match the mechanical and physiological properties of living bone.
