ChBE Seminar - Dr. Scott A. Guelcher: Engineering the Bone Microenvironment to Improve Fracture Healing and Model Disease Progression

Armour College of Engineering's Chemical and Biological Engineering Department will welcome Dr. Scott A. Guelcher, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Director of Vanderbilt Center for Bone Biology at Vanderbilt University, on Wednesday, February 15th, to present his lecture, Engineering the Bone Microenvironment to Improve Fracture Healing and Model Disease Progression.

Abstract

Within the US more than 650,000 bone grafting procedures are performed each year, thus making bone the second most transplanted tissue after blood. Although autologous bone grafts have the best capacity to stimulate healing, explantation risks donor-site morbidity. Thus, the development of synthetic bone grafts exploiting minimally invasive surgical techniques has substantial benefits for treatment of open bone fractures. We have designed nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite/polymer composites that exhibit mechanical properties exceeding those of trabecular bone, stimulate osteoblast differentiation and mineralization, and are resorbed by osteoclasts. When implanted in weight-bearing tibial plateau defects in sheep, the composite bone grafts stabilize the defect, resorb, and support new bone formation. Thus, a key feature of these weight-bearing composites is their ability to provide both mechanical strength and also actively remodel and participate in the healing process. We have also applied the composite technology to fabricate 3D-printed tissue-engineered bone constructs (TEBCs) that recapitulate the anatomic site-specific properties of trabecular bone. We are using these TEBCs to investigate the effects of the physicochemical, mechanical, and topological properties of the bone microenvironment on cell fate as well as the response to therapeutics.

Speaker Bio

Scott Guelcher is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Medicine, and the Director of the Center for Bone Biology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, he was a Senior Associate Scientist at Bayer Corporation and an NIH/NRSA Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Professor Guelcher’s research focuses on the design and development of biomaterials and delivery systems that enhance healing of tissue damaged by trauma or disease. He collaborates with biomedical scientists and clinicians to design, develop, and scale-up new materials for bone and soft tissue regeneration from the bench to the bedside. He also studies how the bone/tumor microenvironment regulates the progression of tumor-induced bone disease and designs new tumor-targeted therapies to block establishment of tumors in bone. Dr. Guelcher is an author on over eighty publications and an inventor on twenty patents and published applications.