Research in this field started in 2005/2006 also in collaboration with CERAMED.
Chitosan-based bone cement (NeoCement®) and injectable bone substitutes (k-IBS® and n-IBS®) were developed by two PhD students working at CERAMED under the supervision of Prof. Dr. João Paulo Borges. Two patents were published from these works. This fruitful collaboration with CERAMED resulted in the creation of a spin-off in 2010, a company named ALTAKITIN. This spin-off will be responsible for the commercialization of all the devices above mentioned.

The work in this field (in collaboration with Prof. Jorge Carvalho Silva)is now dedicated to the production of scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. Hydroxyapatite sub-micron fibers produced by the combination of electrospinning with a simple sol-gel system, where no temperature or pH control is needed, were produced. A paper was published.

In the beginning of 2012 a PhD student started under Prof. João Paulo Borges supervision the development of new bone like assemblies based on liquid crystalline inverse opals. These are highly ordered 3D structures that mimic the supramolecular structure (resultant from a liquid crystalline phase) of collagen type I present in bone and offer a uniform cellular environment for differentiation and growth (paper).

(back to Tissue Engineering)