A magneto-active scaffold for stimulation of bone growth

Abstract

Creating ‘smart’ biomedical devices with the potential for controlled actuation in vivo has been a long-standing scientific pursuit in therapeutic medicine. The present work focuses on a bone regeneration scaffold based on ferromagnetic fibres designed to induce in vivo modelling of in-growing periprosthetic bone by the application of an external magnetic field of clinical magnitude. We present the conceptual basis of such a ‘magneto-active scaffold’, the properties of prime interest and how these properties can be controlled.

Keywords:

• Stainless steel
• Porosity
• Fibre networks
• Ferromagnetism
• Magneto-active scaffold
• Actuation
• Bone growth
• Network Architecture
• Network mechanical properties

Acknowledgements

Financial support for this work has been provided by the European Research Council (Grant No. 240446). The authors are grateful to Mr Diamantis Kokkoris, who carried out the measurements of the magnetisation curves. Acknowledgement is also due to Dr John Durrell and Mr Wolfram Bosbach, of Cambridge Engineering Department, for useful discussions.