Irish consortium awarded €3.4m for osteoporosis innovations

PBC Biomed, Dublin City University and Dolmen Design & Innovation, a consortium of Irish-based industrial, academic and design engineer partners, have joined together to form an expert multidisciplinary team to address the growing global concern of osteoporosis.

The consortium received €3.4 million funding by the Irish government’s Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund (DTIF), focussing on breakthrough technologies established under Project Ireland 2040. 

The Problem

It is estimated that one in three women and one in five men over the age of 50 worldwide, will suffer bone fractures due to osteoporosis and 10 to 15% of those will require a reoperation. With more than 3,000,000 broken bones in Europe annually - of which 30% are osteoporotic - the predicted number of reoperations will cost approximately €450 million a year – a huge health and socio-economic burden.

The gold standard for bone fracture fixation is the use of metallic implants including rods, plates, and screws. Despite their success in treating fractures in patients with normal bone density, the same cannot be said for osteoporotic patients. Implant failure that occurs with osteoporotic bone is generally attributed to the poor bone quality, not the implant. Simply put, there is not enough good bone for the implant to affix to in osteoporotic patients, resulting in inadequate fracture healing. 

Osteoporosis has become a ‘silent’ epidemic, which calls for a breakthrough technology to address the growing concerns of unmanaged osteoporotic fractures and their potential effect on the global population. 

OsStic: The Proposed Solution

Inspired by nature, PBC Biomed has come up with a bio-adhesive that can glue broken bones together and promote regeneration and healing – known as OsStic. Led by Dr. Gerard Insley, chief scientific officer of PBC Biomed, the idea for OsStic came from molluscs’ ability to adhere to wet rocks in intertidal shores. In order for an adhesive to function correctly in a wet in vivo environment, such as in bone, it must be able to stick to wet and fatty tissue. The molecule responsible for this adhesive property is phosphoserine, which is a component found in many proteins in the human body and is involved in the natural healing process of bone. When isolated and combined with tri-calcium phosphate (α-TCP), a natural building block of bone, the combination forms a paste with the ability to glue bone together in wet conditions. The combination of α-TCP and phosphoserine creates OsStic, a biomimetic-based adhesive with sufficient mechanical properties to fix osteoporotic bone fractures and allow rapid biological healing. 

The Team

PBC Biomed will lead the consortium comprised of Biodesign Europe and I-Form, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Manufacturing, both located at Dublin City University, along with Dublin-based Dolmen Design & Innovation. Experts in their respective fields, this team will collaborate to bring OsStic to the clinics.

Biodesign Europe and I-Form at DCU will provide technical expertise in driving the validation and testing of OsStic as a bone adhesive for surgical procedures. Prof. Nicholas Dunne of DCU will lead the academic side of the consortium, with the goal to accelerate the development of the first ever mechanically compliant bone adhesive with tissue regeneration abilities. 

Dolmen Design & Innovation, a product design and R&D partner, will provide their expertise in designing delivery methods for effective application of OsStic on patients’ broken bones. Martin Bruggeman, medical design director, will lead Dolmen in this complex development effort, by creating an innovative solution to apply the bio-adhesive on to bone during surgery, minimising issues faced by surgeons during the procedure. 

PBC Biomed, with offices in Shannon and Memphis, Tennessee, is aiming to accelerate medical innovation in areas of orthopaedics, specifically bone healing and tissue regeneration. Paul Burke leads the PBC Biomed team, which aims to disrupt the current standard of care through the development of OsStic. The ultimate goal is to improve the wellbeing of patients with osteoporotic fractures, by reducing operating times, risk of infection, and need for hardware in complex fracture treatment.