The Right Fit, the Best Healing
Cranio-maxillofacial (CMF) defects (as well as other types bone defects) can result from traumatic injury, infection, tumor removal, surgical burr holes, or congenital bone disease. The current gold standard to treat CMF bone defects is with autografts, but these suffer from limited availability, complex harvesting procedures as well as donor site morbidity. A particular difficulty is shaping and fixing the rigid autograft tightly into the defect so as to prevent premature resorption. Regenerative engineering represents a promising alternative to heal CMF bone defects.

What we are doing:
We are developing “self-fitting” scaffolds based on shape memory polymers (SMPs) that conformally fit into defects following the mere exposure to warm saline.
