LIGHTING THE WAY TOWARDS IN SITU OSTEOCHONDRAL REGENERATION THROUGH MICROEXTRUSION AND FILAMENTED LIGHT BIOPRINTING

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Traumatic injuries to the osteochondral tissues of diarthrodial joints like the knee result in pain, functional impairment, and increased risk of developing post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) and its comorbidities. Current treatments, based on cell-free grafts or cell-based therapies, are expensive and often with limited availability, ultimately leading to total arthroplasty to relieve the pain and restore function. However, the risk of revision of these implants is unacceptably high in young active patients, predicting a looming epidemic of revision surgeries as these implants start to fail. LUMINATE proposes a personalized, one-stage regenerative approach to target large osteochondral lesions, thus preventing PTOA and avoiding costly and invasive arthroplasty surgeries. LUMINATE will develop a next level in situ bioprinting unit, called EndoFLight, which combines three toolheads (i.e., micro-extrusion, filamented light, jetting) to print photoresins laden with patient-derived cells directly at the site of injury. EndoFLight uses filamented light to bioprint highly architected scaffolds with excellent cell guidance properties in seconds. Together with micro-extrusion and jetting toolheads in an arthroscopic set-up, we can deposit multiple biomaterials, biomolecules and cell types together with light-assisted crosslinking of complex structures directly in vivo in a minimally invasive manner. The whole procedure will be extensively validated in a human-relevant in vivo large animal model, paving the way for clinical translation after the end of the project. The exploitation of the results will be ensured through market analysis, the foundation of a spin-off that will commercialize the project results, and analysis of regulatory aspects of all components of the bioprinting suite. Overall, LUMINATE will ensure wide-spread health benefits to the patients suffering from these lesions and will pave the way for enormous socioeconomic advantages for our aging society.