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 With the advent of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and stem cell research, biomaterials science emerges as a key driver of the exciting transition from the use of simple prostheses, which replace damaged tissue with an artificial substitute, to the use of regenerative implants, which help the body heal itself.
When we envision new therapies for regenerating skin, bone, cartilage, tendon, muscle or nerve, in each case, we see, at the core of the tissue scaffold a degradable biomaterial whose chemical, physical and biological properties have been carefully optimized for its intended application.
The New Jersey Center for Biomaterials is one of the leading academic research groups to address the challenges of biomaterials discovery and optimization through a rational approach. The Center’s comprehensive program is built around five major strategic goals:
- Research Excellence
- Education & Workforce Development
- Partnerships with Industry
- Advancement of New Technologies toward Commercialization
- Fostering Entrepreneurship
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Tissue regeneration scaffold
fabricated at the New Jersey
Center for Biomaterials showing
macropores (~400 micrometers
diameter) and micropores
(~10 micrometers diameter)
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Research Excellence is the key target of the Center’s programs because it is the source of value to our many academic and industrial partners. Our research effort is based on three federally funded programs. The NIH-funded technology resource for polymeric biomaterials, RESBIO, embodies the Center’s scientific perspective through development of a combinatorial and computational method for biomaterials discovery and optimization. The NSF-funded Partnership for Innovation seeks to create value from agricultural materials for the biomedical market by connecting the polymer science world with the consumer world around the goal of finding hybrid biomaterials for medical, food packaging and personal care applications. The DoD-funded Center for Military Biomaterials Research, CeMBR, facilitates the military’s access to advanced biomaterials-enabled products and is planning for a bold new effort in craniofacial and limb regeneration.
Education & Workforce. Students from undergraduates to postdoctoral associates have opportunities to work in our programs. The Center provides unique content and valuable networks to formal interdisciplinary programs, including its own NIH-funded Postdoctoral Training Program in Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Science. While these activities prepare the future workforce, the Center proactively connects with current workers through its outreach programs, featuring the New Jersey Symposia on Biomaterials Science.
Partnerships with Industry. Recognizing that we have an ethical obligation to translate research achievements into new therapies and products that benefit all of society, the Center has organized a 20-member industrial membership program, has developed two start-up companies, and licenses its technology to four companies. These partnerships with industry are individually negotiated to allow companies to retain the confidentiality of their data, and often involve research collaboration with several academic laboratories.
New Technologies emerge from the research programs and then are transferred to industrial partners for development toward clinical application. Thus, the societal impact of the Center’s technologies is created through research agreements or licenses with companies. The companies conduct preclinical and/or clinical studies of products built on the Center’s intellectual property. Two recent examples are a new hernia repair device and a fully degradable, X-ray visible cardiovascular stent.
TyRx Pharma
hernia repair mesh.
Entrepreneurship. As the contours of the global economy shift, maintaining the American economy requires that U.S. companies be consistently and efficiently innovative. These innovations become the fuel for entrepreneurial initiatives where risks are taken in order to exploit innovative technologies or processes that will generate value for others.
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Developmental prototype
of REVA Medical fully degradable cardiovascular stent shown on an inflatable balloon
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The Center has been an entrepreneurial organization since its establishment in 1997. We have always sought diverse partners and generated outstanding synergies among them. We have invested both human resources and discretionary funds to seed new projects. We have taken calculated risks around our technologies to produce outcomes that are now beginning to improve medical care.
Our newest efforts have brought us new partners in accelerating innovation and fostering individual entrepreneurship. This is the potent combination that regenerative medicine needs to fast-track promising ideas and put them in the hands of creative developers.
Whether your home base is in the university, industry or government, we invite you to explore ways to participate in our programs. If you are currently a student or a postdoc, you may find our links to the Center’s resident faculty and the Tissue Engineering Training program particularly useful. If you are housed in industry, please look at our industrial membership program. If you are seeking technical polymer-related help, please read about our technical laboratory services. Whatever your affiliation, you may want to participate in our courses, workshops or lectures. If you have questions that are not answered in our website, I welcome you to call and connect with the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials.
Joachim Kohn, May 2007
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