Pre-clinical testing of novel high-strength bioabsorbable bone adhesives

There is an unmet need to replace surgical plates and screws in small joint and non-loadbearing orthopaedic surgeries. Despite a clear clinical need and market opportunity, there are no products available today that address issues such as long surgery times, high cost, patient discomfort, and reoperation for metal implant removal. Dartmouth Medical Research, Ltd. is a medical device development company focused on Bone Repairs using Absorbable Polymers and aims to solve these problems by adhering the bones with a “Hot Melt” resorbable polymer. This novel bone adhesive material simplifies bone fixation surgery and would be used to replace the bulky, expensive, and time-consuming mechanical fixators. More importantly, in long-term animal studies, such materials have shown a 158% increase in strength compared to traditional fixation techniques in non-load-bearing surgical applications. The project objective is to research, evaluate and test a new reinforced version of this technology.

Faculty Supervisor:

Amyl Ghanem

Student:

Antony Bou-Francis

Partner:

Dartmouth Medical Research Limited

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Dalhousie University