Aslan Baradaran, MD

McGill University

Axially Vascularized 3D Printed Bone Flaps

Dr. Aslan Baradaran has over four years of experience as a researcher and editor in clinical journals. He received his Doctor of Medicine from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences and performed a period of fellowship in Plastic Surgery at The University of Milan.

He is a peer-reviewer for surgical journals and has more than 10 reviewed articles in the literature. He is currently doing a Master of Science in Experimental Surgery (Surgical Innovation) parallel to his residency program at the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department at McGill University.

Abstract:

The current gold standard for repair of large facial and long bone defects is the use of bone and blood vessels harvested from another part of the body and transplanted to the area of the missing tissue. This creates significant donor site injury and is an inadequate anatomical match. Although there are great advances in 3D printing and tissue engineering, the ability to reliably grow a custom bone transplant with intact blood vessels is lacking. The work of our multi-disciplinary team has made great strides in being able to reproducibly generate a proof of principle of the first transplantable synthetically grown bone graft containing blood vessels created with a 3D printer.

The creation of a blood vessel network from a single vessel that is large enough (>1mm) to be transplanted as a ‘synthetic’ pedicle is not yet exploited clinically. This has been a fundamental impediment to regeneration of many tissues and could open several new reconstructive approaches. We hypothesize that nutrition and oxygenation from 3D printed transplantable blood vessel networks is sufficient to support new bone growth and to sustain it after transplant to a damaged jawbone.

Making 3D printed materials free of potentially dangerous and expensive growth factors, inducing new blood vessels and tissue engineering custom bones that are identical to the bones that are missing due to trauma or tumor surgery can revolutionize reconstructive surgery and provide significant improvements in patients’ lives.

This novel approach could open a new route in reconstructive surgery by redefining the limits of reconstruction that currently devastate the lives of many Head & Neck cancer and other trauma survivors. Although this is a preclinical project, it is designed to generate the information required for a clinical study of this new technique. The materials we use are FDA approved, less invasive than current techniques and readily translatable clinically.