The Dubrowsky Regenerative Medicine Laboratory Update:

Upcoming projects as of June 2021

Project 1. The use of biologically active bioglass in the management of metastatic bone cancers particularly in the spine.

Secondary bone cancer is sometimes called bone metastases. It happens when cancer cells from a primary tumour somewhere else in the body spread to the bones. For example, breast cancer cells that spread to the bone.

Metastatic tumours of bone, and particularly the spine, cannot be cured. The treatment uses implants/resection to give stability, removal of as much tumour as possible and is necessary to relive any spinal cord compression. Radiotherapy is always required to try and reduce the remaining tumour that cannot be removed.

Again, the use of Gallium bioglass could act as an alternative and assistant this problem, allowing a local tumour cytotoxic effect in the area of resection and a scaffold for the regrowth of bone.

As it is not possible to obtain a cure for this group of patients, it is of utmost importance that quality of life is maximised and that further surgery due to local recurrence and/or fusion/metalwork failure is minimised. This technology has the potential to deliver in both of these scenarios.

The laboratory is to be used for the in-vitro testing of the Gallium bioglass with metastatic cancer cells, gathered from consenting patients, through the ethics of the Research Tissue Bank.

This project is being funded by:

1. Aston University