A damaged piece of bone cannot always heal naturally or be replaced by a patient’s own bone transplantation. In such cases, it can be an option to make use of in-vitro grown tissue, but only up to a certain size. Beyond that, the artificial bone pieces used can no longer be supplied with blood and therefore the cells in the centre of such a graft will die within days. For this reason, the Vascularized Bone Biofabrication Group generates engineered bone tissue grafts which are able to face the initial phase of hypoxia and lack of immediate vascularization. The peculiarity of our group is the use of human adipose-derived cells as a primary and potentially autologous source of skeletal AND vascular progenitors.

In order to develop such grafts, the Vascularized Bone Biofabrication Group has developed two separate bio-fabrication paradigms: 1) Generation of pre-vascularized osteogenic grafts able to get fully vascularized within days/weeks and 2) Generation of hypertrophic cartilage grafts, resistant to initial hypoxia and lack of nutrients, which will remodel into bone organs (cortical and trabecular bone, homing of bone marrow pockets) upon vascular ingrowth by recapitulating the developmental process of endochondral ossification. Among numerous challenges, we try to identify the perfect conditions and methods to fabricate pre-vascularized bone tissue and to allow for a reproducible generation of cartilage by those non-skeletal, adipose-derived cells. Investigation of the biological features and phenotype of adipose-derived cells is also central to generate the next generation of therapeutic grafts.

The Vascularized Bone Biofabrication Group is located at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the University Hospital Basel, establishing a link for direct and concrete translation of engineering research into clinical applications. The research involves the development of perfusion bioreactor-based models, the generation of pre-vascularized tissue grafts and engineered cartilage tissue grafts for therapeutic purposes, primarily in the context of bone regeneration. The group has raised more than 5 million CHF in the last 10 years (Industry, SNF, HORIZON 2020, INTERREG) and works in collaboration with other research groups (e.g. INSERM Unit 1121, headed by Philippe Lavalle, Strasbourg, France or the group of Franz E Weber at the University of Zurich, Switzerland).