Final Report Summary - HIPPOCRATES (A hybrid approach for bone and cartilage tissue engineering using natural origin scaffolds, progenitor cell and growth factors)
This project aimed to provide new tissue engineering technologies for therapeutic treatments, which will ultimately have major social impact by contributing to the challenge of providing lifelong health for our society at an affordable cost. The main aim was the development of advanced functional materials that are needed for improved quality of life of thousands of patients suffering from cartilage or bone tissue loss or malfunctioning.
The companies in the HIPPOCRATES consortium were not competitive amongst themselves but were complementary to each other. The aim was to develop the knowledge and intellectual property required to introduce new products for the proposed applications in clinical applications. This was achieved by means of applying several options (raw materials, processing technologies, growth factors, release systems, surface modifications, culturing technologies and bioreactors, etc.) and each company aimed at developing new products that are intermediate steps on the way to the final product/therapy.
Regarding the industrial partners, ENTEC is a tissue engineering and rapid prototyping (RP) company that has patented the 3D-Bioplotter System that uses a computer-aided plot procedure with a tri-axial dosage system, being designed for use in tissue engineering. It enables generation of three-dimensional (3D) cell scaffolds from a variety of biomaterials for tissue engineering and the construction of patient-specific scaffolds and drug delivery systems. It was the first system capable of processing hydrogels for the creation of soft tissue and hard polymers for the creation of bone substitute and also of integrating living cells. It worked in a well-established collaboration with MAT. This company was founded in 1990 as a spin-off from the University of Leuven and is well known for leading the FP5 PHIDIAS project. At the time of writing it was a private company with several fully owned subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and the United States. MAT develops software that facilitates the use of rapid prototyping machines, namely the "MIMICS" software. MAT had appropriate expertise to project custom scaffolds based on medical images and benefited with new upgrades of the existing software with more focus on tissue engineering applications.
The companies in the HIPPOCRATES consortium were not competitive amongst themselves but were complementary to each other. The aim was to develop the knowledge and intellectual property required to introduce new products for the proposed applications in clinical applications. This was achieved by means of applying several options (raw materials, processing technologies, growth factors, release systems, surface modifications, culturing technologies and bioreactors, etc.) and each company aimed at developing new products that are intermediate steps on the way to the final product/therapy.
Regarding the industrial partners, ENTEC is a tissue engineering and rapid prototyping (RP) company that has patented the 3D-Bioplotter System that uses a computer-aided plot procedure with a tri-axial dosage system, being designed for use in tissue engineering. It enables generation of three-dimensional (3D) cell scaffolds from a variety of biomaterials for tissue engineering and the construction of patient-specific scaffolds and drug delivery systems. It was the first system capable of processing hydrogels for the creation of soft tissue and hard polymers for the creation of bone substitute and also of integrating living cells. It worked in a well-established collaboration with MAT. This company was founded in 1990 as a spin-off from the University of Leuven and is well known for leading the FP5 PHIDIAS project. At the time of writing it was a private company with several fully owned subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and the United States. MAT develops software that facilitates the use of rapid prototyping machines, namely the "MIMICS" software. MAT had appropriate expertise to project custom scaffolds based on medical images and benefited with new upgrades of the existing software with more focus on tissue engineering applications.
