AB-101: Smart Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration

See the Princeton Office of Technology Licensing’s Brief on the Technology here

When tissue within the body is damaged, the crucial alignment of cells (responsible for giving the tissue its characteristic properties and function), is disrupted. The body’s healing mechanism is to regenerate tissue with a non-optimal cellular alignment, a process known as scarring. Scar tissue has abnormal properties and does not function like original, healthy tissue. This technology aims to create a scaffold with a patterned surface to guide cells to an optimal alignment, ultimately producing healthy, normal tissue.

We identified two main use cases of this technology: within SCI treatment as well as the product testing space. We determined that there are dual issues with a similar solution: ~12,000 spinal cord injuries per year & cruel animal testing used for cosmetic products.

Prof. Schwarzbauer and Prof. Schwartz’s cell patterning technology that facilitates the growth of aligned cells. With this technology, combined with the fundamental role that cell alignment plays in tissue structure and mechanics, tissue biology, and cell functioning, this technology can evolve to serve as a tissue model for human organs, as well as a regenerative medicine tool to be used after spinal cord injury.

The medical device application of this technology obviously has high cost and time associated with it, which can be attributed to the clinical trials paradigm that must be performed for medical devices. However, this technology use as a tissue model to supplement and eventually phase out animal testing has a much shorter go to market period. As such, a successful business model for this company would be to divert resources to the cosmetic permeability assay. Once this application reaches a point at which it starts generating revenue, these funds can then be used to push forward the development of the medical device for SCI repair.

This business case was pitched to Arch Ventures, the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, and the NJ Health Foundation.