Our group was recently awarded a 5-year NIH grant titled “Using 3D Nonwovens Fabrication to Engineer Region-Specific Extracellular Matrix Structure and Bioactivity of the Knee Meniscus”. The project seeks to integrate current tissue engineering and regenerative medicine approaches to create a novel implantable, biomimetic scaffold to treat meniscal tears. More specifically, we hope to merge 3D printing, which can create scaffolds that replicate physiologic size and patient-specific geometry but have fibers several orders of magnitude larger than native tissue, and nonwoven textiles that allow for the fabrication of fibers on the scale of native collagen fibrils but cannot be used to make complex anatomical 3D geometries. In addition to the nonwoven fibers, we will also incorporate meniscus-specific extracellular matrix to increase bioactivity. We hope to capitalize on attributes of both approaches to overcome current limitations and create a new 3D nonwoven scaffold fabrication that will provide a better option for treating meniscal tears.
Along with Matt, the other PIs are Dr. Rohan Shirwaiker (Industrial & Systems Engineering) and Amy McNulty (Duke’s Department of Orthpaedic Surgery). Co-PIs ae Dr. Lauren Schnabel (Department of Clinical Sciences), Dr. Behnam Pourdeyhimi (College of Textiles / The Nonwovens Institute), Dr. Emily Griffith (Department of Statistics), and Dr. Jeff Spang (UNC Orthopaedics)