[TECHNOLOGY OPPORTUNITY 2004-042]

Hydrogel – Calcium Phosphate Linking Technology

>Printer friendly version

 
Description:
Full-thickness cartilage defects have limited capacity for self-repair and may predispose the joint
to the development of secondary osteoarthritis. As such, early intervention is critical and
numerous cell and tissue-based techniques such as ACT, MACI, and mosaicplasty have been
developed to treat these localized lesions. However, of these techniques only mosaicplasty
addresses the damaged subchondral bone so commonly seen with full-thickness defects.

Unfortunately, mosaicplasty is limited by the need to harvest tissue from the patient or by
safety and immunological concerns associated with the use of allografts. To address these
limitations, a researcher at Queen’s University has developed a novel method of covalently
binding hydrogels to calcium phosphate-based surfaces, thus, enabling the production of MACIbased
osteochondral implants for use in cartilage repair. The chemistry has been verified to be
non-cytotoxic to human osteoblasts, and bovine fibroblasts and chondrocytes.

Applications:
This technology produces a very strong interfacial bond between a hydrogel-based MACI
implant and a calcium phosphate-based surface. As such, it can be used to bind cell seeded or
tissue engineered hydrogels to synthetic bone graft substitutes, allografts, or autografts. Binding
to a porous bone plug produces a bi-layer osteochondral implant suitable for mosaicplasty
procedures, whereas, binding to particulate bone material may result in a flexible MACI implant
with improved osteointegration capabilities.

Status of Development/Commercialization:
PARTEQ Innovations, the technology transfer office of Queen’s University, is seeking industrial
partners willing to support ongoing development of the technology and/or who are interested
in licensing the intellectual property.

Contact:
Jason Hendry
Manager, Commercial Development
P: 613. 533. 2342
F: 613. 533. 6853
El: jhendry@parteqinnovations.com