Traumatic bone injuries such as blast wounds are often so severe that the body can’t effectively repair the damage on its own. To aid the recovery, clinicians inject patients with proteins called growth factors. The treatment is costly, requiring large amounts of expensive growth factors. The growth factors also disperse, creating unwanted bone formation in the area around the injury.

A new technology under development at the Georgia Institute of Technology could one day provide more efficient delivery of the bone regenerating growth factors with greater accuracy and at a lower cost.

In a recent study, researchers bound the most clinically-used growth factor with microparticles of the drug heparin at concentrations up to 1,000-fold higher than previously reported. The growth factor, called bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2), also remained bioactive after long periods of time spent bound to the microparticles.

“The net result is more efficient and spatially controlled delivery of this very potent and very valuable protein,” said Todd McDevitt, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University with joint appointment in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. McDevitt is also the director of Georgia Tech’s Stem Cell Engineering Center.

For more of this story, and to read the academic paper from the study, follow this link.