04.08.15
The University of Delaware Research Foundation has granted Strategic Initiative Grants to three early-career researchers in bone health, medication delivery and immune system problems. Among the winners is April Kloxin, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She and her mentor Millicent Sullivan, associate professor, won the grant for their study of synthetic materials to promote bone regeneration after fractures.
Kloxin is working to test materials that accelerate bone repair, especially to help people with genetic disorders that weaken bones and make it harder for them to recover from fractures and bone surgeries.
Her proposal is to test new materials that mimic the body’s naturally existing collagen and correct genetic defects that would otherwise sabotage or delay the healing process.
Kloxin and Sullivan developed their proposal after visiting the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children last year to get a better understanding of the problems doctors and their patients faced.
Specifically, Michael Bober, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric geneticist and authority on skeletal genetic disorders, and Richard Kruse, D.O., a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, wanted a way to promote bone regeneration in children with the disorder known as osteogenesis imperfecta (OI). Bones in patients with OI were slow to recover from accidental fractures or certain reparative surgeries.
Bober said any step toward improving recovery would be enormously significant to the patients and their loved ones.
“We’re talking essentially about people that have normal brains, normal intelligence, almost being trapped in their bodies,” he said. “What can we do to augment their skeletons, whether with medicines, implants, polymers that can help the implants? How can we think about ways to make them fracture less and be able to do more?”
Reporting by Beth Miller of UDaily.
Kloxin is working to test materials that accelerate bone repair, especially to help people with genetic disorders that weaken bones and make it harder for them to recover from fractures and bone surgeries.
Her proposal is to test new materials that mimic the body’s naturally existing collagen and correct genetic defects that would otherwise sabotage or delay the healing process.
Kloxin and Sullivan developed their proposal after visiting the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children last year to get a better understanding of the problems doctors and their patients faced.
Specifically, Michael Bober, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric geneticist and authority on skeletal genetic disorders, and Richard Kruse, D.O., a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, wanted a way to promote bone regeneration in children with the disorder known as osteogenesis imperfecta (OI). Bones in patients with OI were slow to recover from accidental fractures or certain reparative surgeries.
Bober said any step toward improving recovery would be enormously significant to the patients and their loved ones.
“We’re talking essentially about people that have normal brains, normal intelligence, almost being trapped in their bodies,” he said. “What can we do to augment their skeletons, whether with medicines, implants, polymers that can help the implants? How can we think about ways to make them fracture less and be able to do more?”
Reporting by Beth Miller of UDaily.