The first meeting between members of the Cost action MP1301 “NEW GENERATION BIOMIMETIC AND CUSTOMIZED IMPLANTS FOR BONE ENGINEERING” will take place September 13th in the Ceramic and Glass Institute in Madrid. The Gropu of Phase Equilibrium Diagrams of the Glass and Ceramics Institute participates in thes Action. The current research network is composed by 70 partners from 19 countries.
This “getting to know you” meeting will be an opportunity to prepare the kick-off meeting that will take place October 2nd in Brussels.
With the ageing of people leading to lesions of articular joint cartilage and osteoporosis, and the need for a better comfort, the number of total hip replacements, bone reconstructions, and spinal fusions, will inevitably increase within the next years.
Commercial calcium phosphate composites for bone regeneration are available, but are restricted to applications that require only moderate load bearing abilities. High toughness ceramics are used to process artificial joint implants, but they are considered as bioinert since no direct bone–material interface is created. There is so far no tough and strong ceramic used at the clinical scale, able to create a strong, biologically relevant, interface with bone.
New advanced biomaterials, with improved processing, bioactivity and/or tailored shapes, providing enough structural integrity and bone integration/regeneration are developed today at the laboratory scale. However, due to the gap between R&D and industries, and between materials scientists and clinicians, applications of new materials will never be possible unless companies are involved in the development.
This new COST Action aims at creating the seed for the European research and industry collaboration, combining basic knowledge from R&D centres with wide technology transfer experience, medical research units from hospitals, and a significant number of companies.