14 DAY TRIAL // The United Kingdom Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has recently awarded a number of top universities in the country more than £4 million ($6.3 million) in funding, for developing novel therapies to mend broken bones, as well as a number of other orthopedic problems. The money will go towards stem cell research, which at this point holds the greatest promise of being able to cure such afflictions. Research in this field, combined with tissue engineering expertise accumulated by some of the members of the initiative, will contribute to finding new ways of repairing the live human bone tissue.
The universities of Keele, Nottingham and Southampton will work together with the Imperial College London, contributing expertise in either of the two research disciplines. At this point, fractures, for example, affect a large part of the older population, and carry a large price tag on healthcare systems worldwide. Bone mass loss, mostly on account of trauma or disease, also accounts for a lot of expenses on the part of hospitals and clinics, and the BBSRC is looking at stamping that out.
“Despite intense research, significant challenges for the reconstruction of tissues such as bone remain. Bone and cartilage tissue repair is a highly complex development process. A key requirement for these regeneration strategies to succeed remains our ability to understand skeletal cell activity, develop appropriate scaffolds and to understand how the environment the cells find themselves in affects their ability to interact with other cells to form new bone or cartilage,” University of Southampton Professor Richard Oreffo, who is also the leader of the new investigation effort, explained.
“We believe a paradigm shift in approach is required if we are to lead internationally in regenerative medicine. Our findings of how stem cells, scaffolds and the physical environment can be combined to induce new bone and cartilage will be used to augment and accelerate bone repair. This will allow us to develop new regimes for cartilage and bone regeneration ultimately leading to more effective treatments,” he added on the same note.
“Fractures, particularly among older people, are a major cause of morbidly and mortality, and costs the NHS [National Health Service] billions of pounds each year. This truly multidisciplinary approach to the basic research necessary to improve our scientific understanding opens up exciting possibilities in the area of skeletal development and repair, an area where advancement is becoming increasingly urgent on both a quality of life and an economic level as our population gets older,” the Chief Executive of BBSRC, Professor Douglas Kell, concluded.