I-Corps: Nanochon, a Commercial Venture to 3D Print Regenerative Implants for Joint Reconstruction

I-Corps：Nanochon，一家商业企业，致力于 3D 打印再生植入物进行关节重建

• 批准号: 1612567
• 负责人: Lijie Grace Zhang
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-01-15 至 2016-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1612567&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Nanochon; Commercial; Venture; 3D

Acute and chronic orthopedic injuries to articulating joints (knee, shoulder, and hip) typically affect and compromise the structural integrity of cartilage and bone. Current treatments can be extremely invasive, such as total hip and knee metallic implants. Other treatment options focusing on graft tissue, cadaver and synthetic material have had limited clinical success. In addition, a large segment of this population is pediatric. Pediatric patients cannot receive a total joint replacement, and, thus, are confined to less effective graft-based approaches. Another potential segment lies in sports medicine, where our system could repair large and complex injuries quickly and restore athletes to pre-injury levels of performance. The proposed technology would provide an easy-to-use, effective and permanent option while reducing surgical procedure time and patient recovery time. This would in turn provide hospitals and surgeons with a highly viable regenerative device for those patients suffering from advanced joint injury, but who are not viable candidates for total joint replacement. This I-Corps team has developed a highly engineered, patient specific, three-dimensional (3D) biologically inspired implant for treatment of disrupted, unstable osteochondral defects using our previously developed novel 3D printing techniques and nanomaterials. This team proposes to use computer aided design (CAD), along with 3D printing, to fabricate functional 3D osteochondral implants from these advanced nanomaterial composites. We propose to carry out a project in order to optimize the composition of our materials and 3D printed design for manufacture. Participation in the I-Corps and funding provided will further customer discovery, especially in the targeted pediatric and sports medicine customer segments, inform design modifications to the existing proposed prototype and catalyze efforts to generate funding for late stage R&D activities in small animal and large animal models. These research models are essential for final scientific validation and will allow the team to move forward with pursuit of investment from private capital sources and industry partnerships, as well as moving forward with FDA approval.

表达关节（膝盖，肩膀和臀部）的急性和慢性骨科损伤通常会影响软骨和骨骼的结构完整性。当前的治疗可能是极具侵入性的，例如总臀部和膝关节金属植入物。侧重于移植组织，尸体和合成材料的其他治疗方案的临床成功有限。 此外，大部分人群是小儿。小儿患者无法全面置换关节，因此仅限于基于移植物的有效方法。另一个潜在的细分市场在于运动医学，我们的系统可以快速修复大型且复杂的伤害，并使运动员恢复受伤前的表现。拟议的技术将提供易于使用，有效且永久的选择，同时减少手术时间和患者康复时间。反过来，这将为患有晚期关节损伤的患者提供高度可行的再生装置，但并不是全部关节置换的可行候选人。这个I-Corps团队开发了一种高度设计的，特定于患者的三维（3D）生物学启发的植入物，用于使用我们先前开发的新颖的3D打印技术和纳米材料来治疗破裂的，不稳定的骨软骨缺陷。该团队建议使用计算机辅助设计（CAD）以及3D打印来制造这些高级纳米材料复合材料的功能性3D骨软骨植入物。我们建议进行一个项目，以优化材料的组成和3D印刷设计的制造。参与I-Corps和提供的资金将进一步发现客户发现，尤其是在目标的儿科和运动医学客户群中，为现有建议的原型提供了设计修改，并促进了为小动物和大型动物模型中的晚期研发活动提供资金的努力。这些研究模型对于最终的科学验证至关重要，将使团队能够从私人资本来源和行业伙伴关系中追求投资，并通过FDA批准前进。