Marine Beaumont1, Marc G. DuVal2, Walid A. Farhat3, George K. B Sndor2,4, Hai-Ling Margaret Cheng1,5
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.