Albro Garners NSF CAREER Award
Aims to improve tissue engineering, spare young arthritis sufferers years of pain
By Patrick L. Kennedy
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted Assistant Professor Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award to develop a more advanced method of tissue engineering for the repair of degenerative joint disorders, such as osteoarthritis (OA).
Musculo-skeletal degenerative disorders like OA afflict more than 20 percent of the population—including many younger people. “A patient might get arthritis in their 20s, but may not be eligible for [metal] joint replacement until their 50s,” says Albro. “So there’s this very long window of pain and debilitation occurring.”
That’s why researchers such as Albro have been seeking ways to regenerate cartilage tissue with biomaterials. “The challenge is, it’s very difficult to truly recreate the tissue, in the lab, with the same composition, structure, and function that’s needed for these tissues to survive for long periods of time—decades—after they’re implanted in a patient,” says Albro. “Generally, the state-of-the-art platforms that exist today will give you only five to ten years of longevity.”
Albro and his team at BU believe the difficulty lies in the complexity of growth factors (GFs). “Growth factors are highly specialized signaling molecules that essentially coordinate the development and the growth of our tissues and our organs in the body,” says Albro. “Growth factors conduct the whole orchestra of the body.”
Naturally occurring GFs can be isolated and administered into a patient as part of a tissue graft. But thus far, Albro says, the general approach has favored quantity over quality. “These growth factors are often considered in the same manner as a conventional nutrient, where, as long as you have an abundant supply, you’ll be good,” Albro says. “Throw it in the culture media, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.”
The cells that take their cues from GFs, though, need more specific information to work with. Otherwise, all sorts of things can and do go wrong. “Where our project leads off on is trying to understand better this miscommunication between the cells and the tissue engineer,” Albro says. “We’re attempting to recapitulate the native regulatory facets [of GFs] that are so important for natural tissue development.”
The Albro team’s unique approach is two-pronged. First, they’re developing bio-inspired scaffolds—the materials that are embedded with engineered cells to support tissue growth. “The scaffolds are bio-inspired to have growth factor interaction domains that allow them to be locally delivered to cells in a controlled and coordinated manner,” Albro says.
Secondly, they’re using computational modeling to tailor those scaffolds to the needs of the cells, so that they can better receive the messages from growth factors. “What we’re trying to do is not just identify the growth factors that need to be used for tissue regeneration, but also identify how they need to be delivered,” says Albro. “We’re bringing a methodical, design engineering approach to tissue regeneration.”
Albro’s collaborators include William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE) and Matthew Layne, associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology in the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.