PORTFOLIO

Bone defects can occur at almost any part of the human skeleton and can be caused by trauma or diseases such as cysts or bone tumors. In case those defects exceed a critical size or are located at sensitive sites, the human body is not able to repair them itself and a surgical intervention becomes necessary. The standard treatment is filling the defect with either autologous bone, that is taken from another site of the patient’s body, or with commercially available bone substitutes. Those bone substitutes can be either synthetic or produced from natural sources such as cadaveric or animal bone. One inherent disadvantage of currently available bone substitutes is their bulky nature so that their application requires a large bone opening.

FLOWBONE is the first all-in-one therapy specifically adapted for the minimal-invasive treatment of non-load bearing, difficult to access bone defects. Pre-clinical studies have also shown that the material has the potential to reinforce weak bone structures. FLOWBONE comes as a ready-to-use material in a syringe that can be applied to the human skeleton through small natural or artificial orifices. The very simple application technique of FLOWBONE makes it usable for a wide range of potential customers in many medical disciplines such as orthopedics, traumatology, reconstructive medicine or dentistry.

The FLOWBONE material is a joint development between clinicians and scientists. It is highly innovative as it follows completely new approach to repair bone defects in the human body. Instead of just filling the defect with material, FLOWBONE initiates the body’s own repair processes by seeding an in situ scaffold formation. Beside the positive biological effects, the material can also convince with its simple application technique and is therefore highly attractive for clinicians from many disciplines.

At present, the FLOWBONE project is still a research project and located in the Laboratory of Biomechanical Orthopedics (LBO) on the EPFL campus. A controlled production process including packaging, sterilization and production control was established in 2017 and 2018. An important part of the preclinical was also accomplished. The next big milestones will be implantation and safety studies as well as a pre-market clinical evaluation before a first in-human use that is scheduled for 2019/2020.

No publications directly linked to the project

Un projet de l’EPFL remporte le meilleur prix, Flash Journal 05/2016