By Olivia Maskill
How do you grow a bone? The strongest component of our otherwise frail human bodies is also the part that is slowest to heal. As CEO of EpiBone, Nina Tandon is head of the world’s first company growing living bones for skeletal reconstruction. How do they do it? And how did she get to the position she is in now?
How do you grow a bone? The strongest component of our otherwise frail human bodies is also the part that is slowest to heal. As CEO of EpiBone, Nina Tandon is head of the world’s first company growing living bones for skeletal reconstruction. How do they do it? And how did she get to the position she is in now?
Despite being a key player in biomedical innovations, Tandon did her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union in New York City. As an undergraduate, she built an electronic musical instrument played through the electromagnetic waves produced by human bodies.
As a Fulbright scholar at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, she worked on the development of LibraNose, a noninvasive cancer-smelling device to detect cancer in patients by analyzing their breath. Then at MIT, she received her MS in Electrical Engineering and went on to do her PhD in Biomedical Engineering, with a concentration in Cardiac Tissue Engineering at Colombia University. It was here that she began creating human tissues.
Bone is an incredible tissue, despite being seen as rigid it is in fact a very dynamic tissue with the propensity to remodel itself. The tissue consists of a mineral matrix that gives it the incredibly hard structure that holds us up, cells within the bone are capable of laying down and reabsorbing these minerals according to the body’s needs.
However, the ability of bone to regenerate is limited and wear over time and accidents can cause bone to be damaged beyond repair. This is why people need to undergo replacement surgery, in which foreign bodies are implanted into the body to maintain function.
This is where EpiBone comes in.
The company starts by using a CT scan to determine the exact 3D shape and size of bone the patient requires, while extracting stem cells from fat in the patient's abdomen.
The next step is the really incredible part. The company builds a custom ‘bioreactor’ and a precise, personalised scaffold that new bone can grow in. Truly incredible stuff. The stem cells that are taken from the patient are basically cells that can develop into any kind of cell, whether that be nerve cell, a skin cell or in this case, a bone cell.
The difficult part of this is providing the living bone cells with the very particular environment they need to survive. In the body, this is second nature as cells are built into a complex matrix of collagen and cells that panders to their every need. For EpiBone and Dr Tandon to perfect this method outside of the body is frankly astounding.
In this perfect environment, the stem cells multiply and mature into healthy bone cells that are genetically identical to bone cells already in the patient's body. This means there is little to no chance of the body rejecting the new bone and recovery time is also significantly shorter than patients who receive artificial implants.
The beauty of this technique is that these cells actually become part of the body. The cells continue to grow, to develop blood vessels, to change just like any other tissue. This method is now so fine-tunes that new, personalised bones can be grown in just 3 weeks.
Nina Tandon has not only bridged a very wide gap between electronics and biology, but she has also advanced the field of tissue engineering to a point where it is no longer a hope for the future. For many of today’s orthopaedic patients, It is a hope for now.
