Very sick people could soon have reason for hope thanks to cutting-edge medical platforms being developed at
Nanofiber Solutions in Columbus.
This young bioscience startup, founded by two
Ohio State University researchers, has created an array of products designed to make medical research, development and surgical procedures more effective, less invasive and less costly.
Among the company's products is its polymer Nanofiber scaffolds. These 3-D scaffolds mimic human body parts more accurately and allow patients to “grow” their organs from their own stem cells, which latch onto the scaffold and take its shape.
Nanofiber Solutions' trachea scaffold has gained worldwide acclaim for its use in the second-ever synthetic trachea, or windpipe, transplant by surgeon Dr. Paola Macchiarini in Stockholm, Sweden.
The patient’s stem cells where used to create a new trachea aided by the scaffold. The trachea grew in just two days as it sat in bioreactor developed by Harvard Bioscience. That synthetic trachea was implanted into the patient who suffered from an inoperable tumor in the organ. There are several more trachea implants scheduled for this year, using Nanofiber Solutions scaffolds, said company CEO Ross Kayuha.
This procedure should be much more safe and less taxing on the body than what would have happened in the past: transplanting the trachea from a donor body. Those transplants are very difficult physically, and often the patient’s body will work to reject the organ. That is far less likely when the transplanted organ comes from the patient’s own cells.
“The patients we are treating are all humanitarian efforts. They are in end-of-life situations and have no alternatives,” said Ross. “Our trachea is artificial and uses their own stem cells and the body isn’t going to fight against it. Three days after the operation, the doctor did a scope of the trachea and could see where the scaffold began. The body had grown an accepted it.”
Nanofiber Solutions was founded by Dr. John Lannutti and Dr. Jed Johnson 2009 as an outgrowth of Dr. Johnson's doctoral research at Ohio State University. The self-funded company has been spurred by a number investments and grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Third Frontier, Edison Biotechnology Institute and Tech Columbus. The company has a small manufacturing facility in Columbus and ten total employees.
By Feoshia Henderson
Source: Nanofiber Solutions CEO Ross Kayuha