Category Archives: News

IN 2017, MORE THAN A QUARTER MILLION WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES WILL BE DIAGNOSED WITH INVASIVE BREAST CANCER, AND MANY WILL HAVE LUMPECTOMIES AND MASTECTOMIES TO REMOVE THEIR TUMORS AND SOME SURROUNDING TISSUE.

Nanofiber-Hydrogel Composite Material.

Though cancer-free, patients who undergo these procedures often have visible defects, even after painful reconstructive surgery, which uses soft tissue taken from another part of the body.

Unsatisfied with current practices that call for invasive reconstructive procedures, Sashank Reddy and Justin Sacks, two plastic surgeons at Johns Hopkins, teamed with Hai-Quan Mao, now the associate director of the University’s Institute for NanoBioTechnology, and Russ Martin, a postdoctoral fellow in Mao’s lab, to create something better.

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ONE NIGHT IN OCTOBER 2013, WHEN KINZIE LANDERS WAS 14 YEARS OLD, HER PARENTS RUSHED HER TO THE LOCAL EMERGENCY ROOM NEAR THEIR HOME IN TEXAS AS SHE WAS SLIDING INTO A COMA. UNAWARE THAT THEIR DAUGHTER HAD TYPE 1 DIABETES, HER PARENTS LISTENED HELPLESSLY AS DOCTORS EXPLAINED THAT THEY’D NEED TO INTUBATE HER. SHE WAS MINUTES AWAY FROM LOSING THE ABILITY TO BREATHE ON HER OWN.

Thoracic Surgeon Richard Battafarano, Otolaryngologist–Head And Neck Surgeon Alexander Hillel And Interventional Pulmonologist Andrew Lerner Are On The Multidisciplinary Team That Staffs The Johns Hopkins Complex Airway Clinic, Offering Comprehensive Diagnosis And Treatment For Patients With Laryngotracheal Stenosis.

“It was a lifesaving moment for which we’re forever grateful,” her mother, Shelly Landers, says.

But, Shelly adds, that single intervention led to future complications that Kinzie and her family never imagined. Months later, she’d developed so much scar tissue within her trachea that she struggled to breathe. Her airway was so swollen, remembers her mother, that doctors told her it was the diameter of a coffee straw.

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IN A PROOF-OF-CONCEPT STUDY WITH MICE, SCIENTISTS AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SHOW THAT A NOVEL COATING THEY MADE WITH ANTIBIOTIC-RELEASING NANOFIBERS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BETTER PREVENT AT LEAST SOME SERIOUS BACTERIAL INFECTIONS RELATED TO TOTAL JOINT REPLACEMENT SURGERY.

A Titanium Implant (Blue) Without A Nanofiber Coating In The Femur Of A Mouse. Bacteria Are Shown In Red And Responding Immune Cells In Yellow.

A report on the study, published online the week of Oct. 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted on the rodents’ knee joints, but, the researchers say, the technology would have “broad applicability” in the use of orthopaedic prostheses, such as hip and knee total joint replacements, as well pacemakers, stents and other implantable medical devices. In contrast to other coatings in development, the researchers report the new material can release multiple antibiotics in a strategically timed way for an optimal effect.

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EACH YEAR, BIRTH DEFECTS, TRAUMA OR SURGERY LEAVE SOME 200,000 PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES IN NEED OF REPLACEMENT BONES IN THE HEAD OR FACE. TRADITIONALLY, THE BEST TREATMENT REQUIRED SURGEONS TO REMOVE PART OF A PATIENT’S FIBULA, CUT IT INTO THE GENERAL SHAPE NEEDED AND IMPLANT IT IN THE RIGHT LOCATION. BUT THIS PROCEDURE NOT ONLY CREATES LEG TRAUMA BUT ALSO FALLS SHORT—BECAUSE THE RELATIVELY STRAIGHT FIBULA CAN’T BE SHAPED TO FIT THE SUBTLE CURVES OF THE FACE VERY WELL.

Cooking Up Bones.

This has led researchers like biomedical engineer Warren Grayson to look to 3-D printing, or so-called additive manufacturing, which creates 3-D objects from a digital\computer file by piling on successive, ultrathin layers of materials. The process excels at making extremely precise structures—including anatomically accurate ones—from plastic, but “cells placed on plastic scaffolds need some instructional cues to become bone cells,” says Grayson. “The ideal scaffold is another piece of bone, but natural bones can’t usually be reshaped very precisely.”

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BIOMEDICAL ENGINEER JENNIFER ELISSEEFF WAS WORKING ON A WAY TO PROMOTE HEALING IN TRAUMA PATIENTS WHEN A FRIEND OF A CANCER PATIENT VISITING ELISSEEFF’S LAB TOLD HER THAT SIMILAR APPROACHES WERE REPORTED TO FIGHT CANCER.

Jennifer Elisseeff

A few years later, Elisseeff began research that promised to bridge the fields of immunology and biomedical engineering. She called the emerging field regenerative immunology. It led her to a new use for her trauma-targeted therapy.

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