Project description
A less painful alternative to knee replacement surgery
Knee replacement is an expensive, painful and complicated medical solution to osteoarthritis, the second leading cause of work disability after heart disease. FibroFix Cartilage is a product designed particularly for knee joints, comprising biostable and biocompatible material. It also allows more flexibility and aids cartilage regeneration. The FibroFix project is seeking funds to continue developing the product as a less expensive and less-painful alternative to knee surgery, hopefully obviating the need for a long post-operative recovery process resulting from conventional solutions.
Objective
Cartilage deterioration and injuries often lead to osteoarthritis (OA) – a long-term chronic disease resulting in bones rubbing together and creating pain, stiffness and severe disability. Knee cartilage injuries are very common and almost half of them go on to develop OA, which is second only to heart disease as a cause of work disability. Resulting from decreased quality of life, hospitalizations and loss of productivity, the economic cost of OA is particularly high in every country that it has been estimated. Currently, all treatments available, including Total Knee joint Replacement (TKR) as the ultimate recourse, are inefficient and expensive: they involve pain, lengthy rehabilitation, frequent complications and high costs. Therefore, given the increasing prevalence of knee OA, its associated burdens and the drawbacks of all available treatments, it is becoming increasingly important to develop an innovative cost-effective solution to this major public health problem worldwide.
FibroFix™ Cartilage is a well characterised, regenerative orthopaedic repair product to address the unmet and pressing clinical need of large and/or osteoarthritic articular cartilage lesions in the knee, developed by Orthox. It is biostable, biocompatible, emulates cartilage function and supports cartilage regeneration at the minimum cost effectiveness ratio. It allows resurfacing of large and/or potentially OA cartilage lesions, prolonged use of the joint, increased mobility, reduced pain and postponement or prevention of TKR. Smooth, robust, resilient, durable and lubricious, it is a unique combination to be applied in orthopaedics and biomaterials shifting the paradigm in knee OA treatment and up to 10 times less expensive than other solutions.
Over the previous 8 years, Orthox have led 11 major grant-funded programmes, raising more than €13M to finance product development. We are now seeking an additional €2.25M for the second investment round.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
OX14 4RQ Abingdon
United Kingdom
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.