The REGENERATION project proposes an innovative, bioinspired, and integrated approach to the development of engineered bone tissues mimicking healthy and aged bone that will be used in bioreactors as in vitro bone models for preclinical drug screening and for understanding the possible effect obtained in basic physiology and physiotherapy studies on elders.
At the heart of the project lies the patented technology of Quantum Magnetic Resonance (QMR), a technology already in use in other medical fields like surgery, physiotherapy, aesthetic medicine and ophthalmology. In the context of REGENERATION, development results of lab-scale models of human bone tissue obtained with and without QMR will be compared.
The project accumulates expertise on different fields of science and technology, including innovative techniques in scaffold manufacturing, cell culture, and long-term tissue preservation, bone damage treatment together with mathematical modelling, advanced imaging and image analysis techniques, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to the compound search / discovery process.
The project addresses a real challenge related to the optimization of lab scale modeling of human tissues. In fact nowadays the common practice is related to the use of either in vitro models, 2D cultured cells, or in vivo models of animals. Both have disadvantages stemming from reduced complexity related to human tissue, inability to model correctly mechanisms like intercellular contacts, and ethics.
The project response to this challenge combines existing technologies in biomedical research, such as a bioreactor enabling 3D cell culture, QMR equipment to facilitate cell culture optimization, along with ICT technologies including ML / AI to augment knowledge relevant to human bone tissue, producing adequate scaffolds that can enable the development of human bone tissue like models.
