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The University of Iowa always has some exciting research happening on campus, and that includes
the College of Pharmacy, where scientists and researchers are developing the Biopatch.
So... what exactly is a Biopatch?
The Biopatch is a collagen matrix that is loaded with pieces of DNA that encode for
a protein that encourages bone formation when cells take up take up the pieces of DNA and
start producing that protein.
Whoa.. wait a second... what exactly does that mean?
It's a patch that helps regenerate bone.
Did you say you were growing bone?
That's right, growing bone, and it's really cool!
Alisager Salem and his team of researchers are developing the Biopatch as a method to
fill in areas of bone that are missing, due to injury or deformation, and it has a variety
of potential applications.
It could be used for cleft palate, facial reconstruction, fractures that are very significant;
if you've been in a car accident and you've got massive splinters that are too large to
fix by themselves, in the military, for example, if there's shards that have caused damage,
then this could be a way to quickly regenerate the bone.
The way the Biopatch works is a lot like a Band-Aid, a Band-Aid that's made of natural
polymers -- like the dissolvable stiches you might get after surgery.
The natural bone cells surrounding the Biopatch will migrate onto the patch and start to multiple
and come into contact with blank, synthetic DNA, which is already loaded onto the patch.
When cells come into contact with the blank DNA, they are instructed and re-programmed
to turn into bone cells, thus creating solid bone.
Eventually, the patch will break down, dissolve, and disappear -- leaving behind nothing but
natural bone. And using the Biopatch is a less intrusive way of dealing with bone injuries
or deformations, which can be invasive and painful.
If you could reconstruct bone in a natural way, and if you could make scaffolds in a
natural shape of the defect that exists, you could correct it without having to harvest
bone or tissue from other sites.
The project is a collaboration between the College of Pharmacy's Division of Pharmaceutics
and the College of Dentistry, led by periodontist Satheesh Elangovan, who is interested in creating
bony sites for dental implants.
Drug delivery as one major focus, and what we're doing with this delivery system is delivering
a drug, a drug that helps bone form, and we're providing a device that delivers that drug
as well, which is pharmaceuticals. It's delivery of drugs. We're working with the College of
Dentistry to use that to form the new bone and to show that bone is formed. It fits completely
in to what you would consider a College of Pharmacy to be interested in.
While it is possible for bone to regenerate naturally, it's only possible in small defects.
The Biopatch allows bone formation on larger injuries or deformations, and while it's still
in the beginning stages of development, the early results are looking good.
In the models that we tested up until now, we see after 4 weeks, very significant regeneration
of bone, relative to untreated, where you see no bone formation at all .
As amazing as this research is and the potential impact it could have in the medical and scientific
community, none of the research would be possible without the help of graduate students. Ali's
lab has 3 student research assistants working on the project, including Sheetal D'Mello,
who came to the University of Iowa because of her interest in pharmaceutics and the interdisciplinary
research involved with the Biopatch.
I was really good in organic chemistry and biology, so I thought the best combination
would be pursuing pharmaceutics, and drug delivery was very interesting, and the Biopatch
is one of those projects of drug delivery.
She was actively involved in constructing and testing materials to make the patch. And
after years of work and research, she's excited to see the early results.
This is like a dream come true and more than anything I've ever asked for.
Well, I'm proud to say that I formulated the Biopatch, working collaboratively with the
College of Dentistry because we got a lot of help from them. The fun part was to see
that it was working. That made us feel really glad and proud about what we were doing and
motivated us further.
Students get hands on research experience, creating a potential new drug that will have
the ability to regenerate bone. And Ali is proud that he's working with the next generation
of scientists, who will be able to take this new therapy to the next level.
By taking a graduate student, having them learn all the techniques, to do the development
of the drug, the testing of the drug, looking at the properties of the drug, to do the biological
testing -- we're providing them with all the skills so when we look at the next iteration
of technology and the next advance in technology, these graduate students from the University
of Iowa, we'll be well placed to make those advancements and create the next generation
of drugs and devices that improve therapies for patients. And we're doing that right here.
That's right... they're creating bone in a lab at the University of Iowa. Alisager and
his team are leading the way, solving a problem that is very personal to Ali.
I have friends; very close friends, who have children that have had clefts palate. I've
had an interest in trying to pursue approaches that might be able to reconstruct the bone
that is missing in those type of cases without having to do transplantation of tissue of
bone from other sites, but to be able to reconstruct it naturally.
And if the early results are any indication, Ali and his student researchers are heading
in the right direction.