Project description
Smart biomaterials for repairing joint cartilage and bone
Osteoarthritis affects over 600 million people worldwide and is projected to rise dramatically in coming decades. It often begins with damage to the osteochondral unit, the layer of cartilage and underlying bone that lines joints. Current treatments provide only temporary relief and fail to restore the damaged tissue. Regenerative strategies capable of repairing this complex structure are urgently needed. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SPORA project will develop biomaterials that respond to external electric and magnetic signals and release growth factors and guide tissue regeneration. These smart biomaterials will be validated in human stem cell models and employed to restore osteochondral tissue in situ, with broader potential applications in cardiac, wound and muscle repair.
Objective
Osteochondral (OC) defects, involving both articular cartilage and subchondral bone, are precursors of osteoarthritis (OA), a degenerative disease affecting >600 million people and expected to rise by 75% by 2050. Current treatments (pharmacological approaches, viscosupplementation, cell injections, acellular implants, surgery) are unsatisfactory, offering only temporary relief, poor-quality fibrocartilage, or lacking long-term integration. Total joint replacement, though effective, is invasive and risky, stressing the need for regenerative strategies able to restore the OC unit durably.
SPORA addresses the poor bioactivity and limited clinical translation of current OC Tissue Engineering strategies by developing next-generation smart platforms based on stimuli-responsive biomaterials (hydrogels and nanocarriers) externally triggered by electric and magnetic stimulation. These platforms will enable spatiotemporal control of growth factor (GF) release, regulation of cell fate toward tissue-specific differentiation, and guidance of extracellular matrix deposition directly in situ. The project will progress through four main steps: (i) defining biomaterials, requirements, and regulatory frameworks using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools; (ii) developing stimuli-responsive biomaterials and biofabricating the OC unit; (iii) optimizing external stimulation to modulate GF release; and (iv) validating the OC unit in vitro to assess human stem cell differentiation and tissue-specific matrix production.
Clinically, SPORA aims to restore OC lesions and delay or prevent OA progression, but, beyond this impactful goal, the paradigm developed in SPORA can be readily adapted to other tissues and diseases (e.g. cardiac, wound, and muscle repair) by modulating the specific bioactive factors and optimizing their stimulus-driven delivery, thus opening the path toward a new era of adaptive regenerative biomaterials.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine surgery
- engineering and technology industrial biotechnology biomaterials
- medical and health sciences medical biotechnology implants
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1049 001 Lisboa
Portugal
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