October Creating a novel method to measure bone formation

University of Galway partners with Zoan BioMed to test coral biomaterials

University of Galway are collaborating with Irish medtech company Zoan BioMed to design a novel way of tracking and measuring the formation of bone in a lab.

The project is funded by Zoan BioMed and Enterprise Ireland through the Innovation Partnership scheme.

Zoan BioMed grow tropical coral, sustainably, in their cutting-edge facility in Galway. Coral shares many chemical and physical properties with bone, making for an excellent bone substitute, or “scaffold”.  

The researchers on the project aim to test the potential of coral scaffolds to treat people with bone injuries or other damage, for example from tumour removal. 

The partnership with University of Galway will substantially speed up the evaluation of new scaffolds for Zoan BioMed, and for the orthopaedics industry more widely, by developing high throughput rapid assessment methods for biocompatibility and bone forming potential, which will shorten the time to clinical trials for new orthopaedics scaffolds. Such new methods are also important in the phasing out of animal testing for new medical devices.

Dr Martin Johnson, head of Research and Development and product development at Zoan BioMed, is excited about the opportunities this project provide. “Creating enhanced laboratory screening methods at University of Galway will help to eliminate or substantially reduce expensive, elongated, ethically challenging animal testing through reliable predictive capability in the laboratory.  This will revolutionise orthopaedic material development in the coming decade.

“The global bone grafting market is part of a global $54 billion market that continues to grow at pace, driven by the goal of providing a pain-free lifestyle for our aging population.

“With the abundance of small and large orthopaedic companies throughout the country, Ireland is uniquely placed to launch high-quality products into this market, bettering the health of the world-wide population. 

“Critical to evaluating the potential of a new scaffold as it enters the market is the evaluation of its compatibility with human cells and its bone-forming potential. 

Dr Cynthia Coleman, a cellular manufacturing and therapy expert at the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at University of Galway, a long-time collaborator with Zoan BioMed, has expertise in using cells to make bone in the laboratory. Her research focuses on using these cells to understand the biologic pathways underpinning bone formation.  

Dr Coleman explains: “Collaborating with Zoan BioMed means that we can create new ways of working to advance both research into bone health and regeneration, and help speed the development of orthopaedic devices into the clinic.  

“Developing this technology is incredibly exciting because it will allow us to see the cells as they move through different stages of bone formation and enable us to measure these changes.

“This method will help us understand the process by which individual cells become bone tissue and give us the tools to support collaborating academics and industrial partners as they develop technology to support bone formation in the clinic. It will make the evaluation of new scaffolds, quicker and more reliable.”

Stephen Wann, Chief Executive Officer of Zoan BioMed, said: “Zoan BioMed recognises the importance of the development of new methods. This technology is particularly relevant to Zoan BioMed at its current stage of development, where it aims to rapidly develop a pipeline of future products for the orthopaedic market including 3D printed coral-based bone substitutes. 

“Further medical applications are in development, in particular using novel combinatorial scaffolds, containing coral and other materials mixed together.  These combined scaffolds could be 3D printed to create a particular shape or to perfectly fit into a patient’s injury. 

“The cost and time delays associated with current methods of evaluating how well cells can attach to and survive on scaffolds and make bone means the development of orthopaedic products from coral or other biomaterials is slow.”

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