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Researchers at Columbia University have been awarded nearly $39 million to build a living knee replacement out of human stem cells and biomaterials, the school announced late last week.
The federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which was established by the Biden administration to expedite medical therapy development, awarded the five-year funding to meet the unmet need for better knee replacement technology among younger patients, according to Clark Hung, the vice chair of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and co-principal investigator on the project.
Traditional knee replacements are designed to improve mobility for people in the last decades of their life, he said, with the hope that the implants outlive them. But younger patients with severe arthritis and other conditions often need their implants replaced after 10-15 years, which can be difficult and expensive.
To that end, Hung and co-principal investigator Nadeen Chahine, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, will aim to make a replacement out of stem cells. The researchers will use patients’ own cells or cells from a donor, and patients’ bodies would be able to break down the implants as they age without pain, Hung said.
Chahine added that over time, the biomaterials the implants are made of would become cartilage and bone, allowing the knee to regenerate–a process that is impossible with current plastic and metal implants. There is little risk of rejection, she added.
“We’re going to provide all the materials and the structural framework,” Hung said. “The body essentially is going to be the bioreactor and if all goes well, the cues that we deliver will help guide and provide a template for that patient to form.”
After the researchers build replacements, they will test their impact on animals before moving into human trials. Women, who are often underrepresented in clinical trials, will make up at least half of the testing population, Chahine added.
The Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is located in Washington Heights while Columbia Engineering is based in Morningside Heights.
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Jacqueline Neber , 2024-04-03 11:33:04
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