Fracture Putty for Traumatic Leg Injuries

Fracture Putty at UGA, a DoD (DARPA) grant to Dr. Steven Stice, Director of Regenerative Bioscience Center and Dr. Peroni, College of Veterinary Science University of Georgia


Traumatic battlefield wounds such as compound bone fracture are very difficult to treat, often requiring multiple surgeries and long healing and rehabilitation times. Amputations are not uncommon. Current treatments employing bone screws, plates, and rods are deficient and can themselves lead to further complications.

Our DARPA funded project seeks to create a dynamic putty-like material containing stem cells which, when packed in/around a compound bone fracture, provides full load-bearing capabilities within days, creates an osteoconductive bone-like internal structure, and degrades over time to harmless resorbable by-products as normal bone regenerates.

Dr. Stice is helping to develop the adult stem cells that will rapidly form bone and Dr. Peroni is developing the large and small animal models for testing the "fracture putty". The PI is a leading human orthopedic surgeon at Baylor Scholl of Medicine.

"Fracture Putty" could rapidly restore a patient to ambulatory function while normal healing ensues, with dramatically reduced rehabilitation time (and the elimination of infection and secondary fractures).

The goals of the Fracture Putty program are ambitious but, once achieved, would have a
revolutionary impact on wound healing. This program is the ultimate convergence of materials science, mechanics, and orthopedics.

Neural Biosensor DoD contract at ArunA Biomedical Inc., a UGA spin out located in the
UGA Bioscience Center. Dr. Steven Stice is a cofounder.

Effective monitoring of environmental toxicants and bioterrorism agents remains a major challenge of great importance for both military and civilian populations, as existing technologies assess only known toxicants and are limited in scope. To address this concern, ArunA Biomedical Inc is developing human-based biosensors to detect known and unknown toxicants and bioterrorism agents. This project aims to develop techniques to improve and accelerate human neural progenitor cell differentiation into functional neural networks for use in human- based biosensors and fluorescence-based assays as sensor elements.


Some of the progress made to date:

• Production of human cells like those lost in Parkinson that can be used to assess potential toxins, pesticides that could cause this disease in civilian and military populations.
• Production of cells that can be used in sensitive assays to detect botulism toxins. This toxin is one of the top 5 agents of concern by the military in biological warfare. The assay can also be used in addressing FDA concerns about purity and quality of BOTOX, a form of botulism toxin that has cosmetic and medical uses. This is part of a $1.4 billion market.
• The research team didn’t quite meet that objective by the end of its three-year study; biologically compatible putty that would stabilize and allow room for the bone to heal remained elusive. Yet, an alternative method for fast bone healing was discovered in rodents. Bridging segments in the femur and fibula, new bone formations were developing within two weeks after being injected with cells. “We were making bone like crazy and healing fractures in remarkably short periods of time,” Heggeness said. Read more

Modernization of EPA Toxicity Test - RBC at UGA

Rapid toxicity test for household, industrial compounds in the works at UGA

The average American comes in contact with thousands of these chemicals each year. The biggest concern, though, is determining which of these compounds disrupt early fetal and infant brain development.

To help change the paradigm of how these chemicals are tested—and how rapidly the EPA receives results—the agency tapped researchers in the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center. The university is one of three institutions sharing a $3 million grant from the EPA to more quickly determine the physiological effects of environment chemicals on children and infants.

Until now, determining the toxicity of each chemical could take almost two years. The UGA Regenerative Bioscience Center's $799,938 share of the grant will allow researchers to modernize the current testing process using work they pioneered using undifferentiated cells. "We hope to do a study in a dish that can be completed within a week so we'll be able to speed up the process and make it less expensive and not have to use animals," said center Director Steve Stice, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Reproductive Physiology in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Because of the damaging presence of these toxicants, early interruptions in brain development can lead to a broad range of lifelong problems. With one in six children in the U.S. diagnosed with a developmental or cognitive disorder, "it is more important than ever to understand the potential toxicity in the chemicals that we come in contact with every day," Stice said.

The methods used by the Regenerative Bioscience Center will expand the number of chemicals that can be tested each year, reducing process time, effort and cost while also minimizing animal use.

"This is an opportunity to further foster interdisciplinary research that encompasses toxicology, neural development, stem cells and new imaging technology," Stice said. "This grant will span a wide range of disciplines to follow a toxin's initial effects at the neural stem cells to how it affects people, potentially leading to uncovering environmental causes of autism. With EPA funding we can be a task force of a much needed solution."

Stice presented the topic, "Human Neural Stem Cell Metabolomic, Cellular and Organ Level Adverse Outcome Pathway Relationships for Endocrine Active Compounds," to 6,000-plus toxicologists from more than 50 countries on March 25 at the EPA Grants Kick-Off Meeting, part of the annual Society of Toxicology gathering in Phoenix, Ariz.

"By better predicting whether chemicals have the potential to impact health and human development, these grants will not only advance the science necessary to improve chemical safety but protect the well-being and futures of children in this nation," said Lek Kadeli of the EPA's Office of Research and Development.

The funding for the Regenerative Bioscience Center's study is provided by the EPA under grant No. R835551 on "Human Neural Stem Cell Metabolomic, Cellular and Organ Level Adverse Outcome Pathway Relationships for Endocrine Active Compounds." For more information on the grant, see http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/10209/report/0.