A team of scientists from the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute has developed a new bone engineering technique named Segmental Additive Tissue Engineering (SATE). With this technique, segments of bone engineered from stem cells fuse together to form large-scale, personalized grafts.

Susan Solomon, the CEO of NYSCF said, “We are hopeful that SATE will one day be able to improve the lives of the millions of people suffering from bone injury due to trauma, cancer, osteoporosis, osteonecrosis, and other devastating conditions. Our goal is to help these patients return to normal life, and by leveraging the power of regenerative medicine, SATE brings us one step closer to reaching that goal.”

Dr Giuseppe de Peppo, the leader of this study said, “Bone defects obtained in disease or injury are a growing issue, and having effective treatment options in place for personalized relief, no matter the severity of a patient’s condition, is of critical importance.”

Dr Martina Sladkova, the first author and NYSCF researcher said, “As the size of the defect that needs to be replaced gets larger, it becomes harder to reproducibly create a graft that can move from the lab to the clinic. We wanted to see if we could instead engineer smaller segments of bone individually and then combine them to create a graft that overcomes the current limitations in the size and shape of a bone that can be grown in the lab.”

The research team claimed that SATE is versatile, standardized, as well as easily implemented. The quality of life of both children and adults who are suffering from segmental bone defects could be improved by enabling bone graft engineering.