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Drs. Muhammad Sami Hasan and Daniel Boyd of the Department of Applied Oral Sciences have recently been awarded Early Stage Commercialization Funding from Innovacorp. The funding will support the initial steps of commercializing a new bone graft substitute.

Synthetic bone grafts are used to provide a three-dimensional structure or scaffold to which natural bone cells can attach and grow in order to form new bone tissue. Ideally, the scaffold eventually breaks down or is absorbed, leaving behind the newly formed tissue.

Drs. Hasan and Boyd have developed a new glass-based scaffold material that has the advantage of controlled degradability and which also releases ions that stimulate tissue repair. The developers believe the material has potential application as a bone graft substitute in orthopedic and oral-maxillofacial surgery.