Askel Healthcare Ltd, an SME partner in RESTORE project, has a cartilage repair device, called COPLA® Scaffold, in Animal Healthcare market (www.askelhealthcare.com). While COPLA® Scaffold is helping companion animals, Askel is moving towards human use of COPLA® Scaffold with the help of the project.
COPLA® Scaffold is used in different weight-bearing joints to regenerate either the top-most cartilage surface of the joint or deep damage reaching bone under the cartilage layer. COPLA® Scaffold is surgically implanted onto the damaged joint surface, where it helps the body to regenerate cartilage tissue, a tissue otherwise with limited self-repair ability. The weight-adaptive matrix of COPLA® Scaffold is tailored for load transfer as well as nutrition transport – both features are essential factors for cartilage formation.
In RESTORE we are taking the next step and finding ways to enhance the regeneration properties of COPLA® Scaffold – and perhaps to find ways to fight against those pathological processing further degrading the damaged joints. To make this reality, in RESTORE we are combining correct cartilage repair microenvironment (i.e. the COPLA® Scaffold) with functionalized nanoparticles to modulate undesirable biological events and to enhance the cartilage repair process.
Stay tuned and hear what we are achieving during this project!
