Promoting patient safety by a novel combination of imaging technologies for biodegradable magnesium implants

General Information

Biomedical imaging has gained a significant technological push and is the mainstay for diagnosis and therapy monitoring. Still, imaging is yet not optimized for the new class of biodegradable magnesium (Mg)-based implants. MgSafe addresses this point by training 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) in both, imaging and implant technologies. All ESRs will develop their individual Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and be trained based on the “T-skills concept” in technologies and transferable skills relevant for their career development and prepared to take over leadership positions in an area of tremendous research promises and clinical relevance where the lack for experts is severe and very well recognized. The ESRs will quantify the physical impact and suitability of a variety of modalities on Mg implants. Highly sophisticated imaging techniques (such as nano and μCT, MRT, PET, USPA, IR) will be developed beyond the forefront of medical device production in vivo and with in situ labelling options to deliver non-invasively data on different time and length scales of the body reaction and material behavior during Mg degradation with a precision and plethora of details which is currently not available. Two Mg-alloys and CE-certified Mg-implants will be studied in rats and sheep. Dummy studies will be performed in parallel. The obtained multimodal imaging data will be combined with molecular biological/biochemical analysis, thereby increasing the information about physiological changes without using additional animals. An additional dimension will be added by the analysis of explants to obtain highest resolution chemical and material science data. All relevant biological and chemical in vivo and ex vivo data will be merged by computational 3D methods, simulations and machine learning approaches.
The combination of these results will not only allow for an upscaling of the processes towards humans but will also deliver valuable data in terms of patient safety.
MgSafe is an European Training Network (ETN) in the frame of the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Program and will fund 15 PhD positions (the ESRs mentioned above), each for a 3 years duration, in total amounting to 540 ESR months. Hereon acts as the coordinator of the MgSafe ETN.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018
Project Type	Marie Skłodowska-Curie EuropeanTraining Network
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 811226
Co-ordinator	Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon (DE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
3,956,398	788,376

Contact Person at Hereon

Prof. Regine Willumeit-Römer, Institute of Metallic Biomaterials, MB, Phone: +49 4152 87 1291 E-mail contact

Participants

BRI.TECH GmbH (AT), Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche (IT), FujiFilm Sonosite (NL), Göteborg Universitet (SE), Hogskolen I Oslo og Akershus (NO), Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (DE), Medizinische Universität Graz (AT), MRI. TOOLS GmbH (DE), OSLOMET - Storbyuniversitetet (NO), Politechnika Warszawska (PL), Scanco Medical AG (CH), Syntellix AG (DE), University of Oslo (NO)

Last Update: 18. May 2021