Abstract #1953

Tissue-Engineered VEGF-Impregnated Construct to Enhance Angiogenesis for Improved Bone Regeneration: An In-Vivo Longitudinal DCE-MRI Study

Marine Beaumont¹, Marc G. DuVal², Walid A. Farhat³, George K. B Sndor^2,4, Hai-Ling Margaret Cheng^1,5

¹Research Institute & Diagnostic Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children , Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ²Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ³Research Institute & Urology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ⁴Regea Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland; ⁵Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Traditional bone reconstruction requires surgery to harvest bone from the patient, which is limited in supply, potentially painful, and associated with side-effects. Tissue-engineering is a promising technique to overcome these major drawbacks of autogenous bone grafting, but the optimal biomaterials and methods for bone regeneration are not well understood. In this in-vivo longitudinal study, we propose a new regeneration paradigm: inserting a biological soft tissue construct fortified with VEGF to enhance angiogenesis for improved repair of a bony defect. Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI is shown capable of characterizing angiogenesis and reveals vessel development consistent with successful bone formation.