MUNICH, May 4, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The
European Patent Office (EPO) announces that Serbian-American
scientist Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic has been nominated as a finalist
of the European Inventor Award 2021 for her innovative contribution
to biomedical engineering. She has dedicated her decades-long
career to developing an ex vivo tissue engineering technique which
offers a safer, more precise way of cultivating skeletal, heart,
lung, and vascular tissue for either transplantation, disease
modelling, or drug testing.
Named as one of three finalists in the prestigious "Lifetime
achievement" category, Vunjak-Novakovic's work has solved the
intricate problems involved in replacing damaged tissue. Before she
developed her technique, tissue replacement either involved a
painful graft from a patient's body or carried the risk of immune
rejection in the case of grafts taken from a cadaver.
Vunjak-Novakovic's pioneering technique involves creating living
biological grafts by growing a new piece of tissue ex vivo from a
patient's own cells, entirely eliminating these problems.
"Over her lifetime, Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic has made a major
contribution to tissue engineering, one of the most promising ways
to prolong the human lifespan and improve quality of life," said
EPO president António Campinos, announcing the 2021 EPO Award
finalists. "Her scientific innovation, entrepreneurial mindset and
patented inventions offer the prospect of safer rehabilitative
medicine in musculoskeletal, heart and lung conditions, welcoming a
new era in regenerative medicine."
The winners of the 2021 edition of the EPO's annual innovation
prize will be announced at a ceremony starting at 1:00 pm EDT (19:00
CEST) on June 17, which has
this year been reimagined as a digital event for a global
audience.
Controlled environment
Replacing damaged or worn-out tissue has long been a goal of
scientists working in the biomedical field. In the 1980s, when
Vunjak-Novakovic began her career, the mainstream approach was to
combine cells and biomaterials, and insert them into the body, with
the intention of this transplant finding a way to regenerate
tissues. The researcher, herself inspired as a child by the
scientific excellence of fellow Serbian Nikola Tesla, pioneered an
alternative: growing cells in a laboratory by carefully controlling
the external environments – the temperature, pH, nutrients, oxygen,
growth factors and physical forces – to influence the type of
tissue they develop into, and then implanting this tissue into the
body. "You cannot fool the cells," says Vunjak-Novakovic. "You need
to provide them with the full spectrum of conditions which they
experience in nature."
The primary focus for Vunjak-Novakovic and EpiBone – one of the
companies she co-founded – has been facial surgery. To create
engineered facial bones, the missing or damaged area is scanned to
define the precise shape of the defect, which help to create a 3D
model of the required bone replacement. This is then fed into a
microfabrication device to carve a piece of pig or cattle bone
matrix into the same shape, creating a scaffold for the new bone
tissue to grow in.
The scaffold is populated with stem cells from the patient's own
abdominal fat and placed inside a bioreactor, which mimics the
finely calibrated conditions within the human body, enabling the
bone to grow. Because bone tissue is constantly renewing itself,
the animal scaffold will eventually be replaced with the patient's
own bone. Vunjak-Novakovic believes that EpiBone is the only
company that can customise a patient's bone to their biology and
anatomical shape.
In 2016, she was granted a European patent for the bone
regeneration method she developed. She says patents have been
crucial to the commercial translation of her research. "If we see
we have a technology that is patentable – meaning something
non-obvious which could make a major difference in some area of
science, engineering or medicine," she says, "then we would always
file a provisional patent application before we talk about the
finding at scientific meetings or publish a paper about it."
Vunjak-Novakovic has also developed a protocol for engineering
adult-like heart tissue, which is currently commercialized by TARA
Biosystems, another company she co-founded. It creates living heart
tissue for biomedical research, including in vitro testing of new
drugs. She is also co-leading efforts to regenerate badly damaged
lungs for transplantation, by connecting them to the recipient's
circulatory system for several days before the transplant takes
place, which may have positive implications for the success of lung
transplants. At present, up to 80% of donor lungs are rejected for
serious but potentially reversible injuries.
EpiBone hopes to target engineered bone products for children
with congenital deformations of the head and face. Currently,
children with such conditions must undergo several surgeries over
the years because replacement grafts are needed as the child
grows.
Championing tissue engineering
With more than 53,400 citations and more than 420 journal articles,
Vunjak-Novakovic is today among the most highly cited engineers in
the world and has received numerous awards and recognitions
throughout her career. In 2007, she became the first woman engineer
to give a Director's Lecture at the National Institutes of Health,
and the following year she was inducted into the Women in
Technology International Hall of Fame.
Along with EpiBone, which currently has 20 employees and has
attracted more than $11.9M USD in
funding, Vunjak-Novakovic has co-founded three other companies.
These include TARA Biosystems, which engineers heart-like tissue
for use in drug screening; Xylyx Bio, which manufactures
tissue-specific substrates to support cell growth; and Immplacate
Health, which is using mesenchymal stem cells to suppress various
autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. She is currently
investigating whether their technology could repair lungs damaged
by COVID-19 and testing a new treatment based on inhalation
therapy, where the active component of the medicine is a molecule
secreted by the stem cells.
Along with her entrepreneurship and scientific excellence,
Vunjak-Novakovic has also shown an impressive commitment to support
colleagues and nurture a new generation of researchers, having
trained over 150 junior faculty, clinical fellows, post-doctoral
students, and medical and graduate students, many of whom are now
either faculty at universities across the world or executives in
the biotech industry. She considers her role as a mentor as among
the most satisfying contributions of her career: "Mentoring is the
best and most important component of what we do in academia. The
future of engineering and medicine rests on young talent engaged in
scientific research," she says.
About the inventor
Serbian-American biomedical engineer Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic was
born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1948.
Currently residing in New York,
USA, she is University Professor, the highest academic rank
at Columbia University, and the first
engineer to ever receive this distinction. She is also the Mikati
Foundation's Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical
Sciences, Professor of Dental Medicine and Director of the
Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia University, New
York. In 2008 Vunjak-Novakovic was inducted into the Women
in Technology International Hall of Fame and has received numerous
awards, including the Pritzker Award of the Biomedical Engineering
Society, and Shu Chien Award of the
American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 2020, she was
decorated with the Order of the Star of Karađorđe, Serbia's highest
honour. In 2021, she received the Pierre
Galletti Award, the highest honour that the American
Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering bestows on an
individual. She has been elected to the Academia Europaea, Serbian
Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, and
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Vunjak-Novakovic is named in many patents, including EP2408401
and EP1112348, granted in 2016 and 2005 respectively, which form
the basis for her nomination as a finalist of the European Inventor
Award 2021.
View the video and photo material for Gordana
Vunjak-Novakovic
About the European Inventor Award
The European Inventor Award is one of Europe's most prestigious innovation prizes.
Launched by the EPO in 2006, it honors individual inventors and
teams of inventors whose pioneering inventions provide answers to
some of the biggest challenges of our times. The finalists and
winners are selected by an independent jury consisting of
international authorities from the fields of business, politics,
science, academia and research who examine the proposals for their
contribution towards technical progress, social development,
economic prosperity and job creation in Europe. The Award is conferred in five
categories (Industry, Research, SMEs, Non-EPO countries and
Lifetime achievement). In addition, the public selects the winner
of the Popular Prize from among the 15 finalists through online
voting.
About the EPO
With 6,400 staff, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the
largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, The
Hague and Vienna, the EPO
was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents
in Europe. Through the EPO's
centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain
high-quality patent protection in up to 44 countries, covering a
market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world's
leading authority in patent information and patent searching.
Media Contact
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Communications (USA), +1
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Luis Berenguer Giménez, Principal Director Communication,
Spokesperson, European Patent Office (EPO), +49 89 2399 1203,
press@epo.org
SOURCE European Patent Office