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| SPEAKER |
| Dr Nick Skaer |
| Founder and CEO |
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Orthox Ltd
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MEETING
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January 2009 |
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| BIOGRAPHY |
Dr Nick Skaer is the Founder and CEO of Orthox Ltd, a new, Oxford based company which recently secured £1.6 million seed funding to develop Spidrex, a high strength, absorbable, tissue regenerative biomaterial, for cartilage and bone repair applications. A graduate of Oxford and Strasbourg Universities, Nick held positions in France, the US and Cambridge before joining Oxford Biomaterials Ltd, Orthox's parent company, where he led development of the Spidrex technology platform. Joining initially as Chief Scientist, Nick was CEO of Oxford Biomaterials between 2004 and 2008 during which time he secured over £2 million to fund the development of Spidrex. He was a founding director of two equity financed Oxford Biomaterials spin out companies, Neurotex Ltd and Suturox Ltd, which are commercialising Spidrex based medical devices for nerve repair and wound closure respectively.
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| TALK |
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Regenerative Silk-based Scaffolds for Orthopaedic Tissue Repair
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| DESCRIPTION |
Spidrex is a remarkable natural biomaterial formed from fibroin, a long chain protein which is the principal structural component of silk fibres. Spidrex is tough, biocompatible and provides an excellent substrate for the attachment and proliferation of human cells. It is available as both a fibre and as a matrix, as well as a composite material of the two. This permits great adaptability and has allowed the development of Spidrex for a wide variety of product areas, including resorbable sutures, nerve repair conduits, and as tissue scaffolds for cartilage and bone repair. Spidrex cartilage and bone repair scaffolds are strong and highly resilient with an open porous structure which supports cell and tissue ingress. They withstand compressive loads of up to 20 MegaPascals while retaining their properties over several million load cycles, and have been shown to remodel in vivo. The technology is initially being targeted at repair of the meniscal cartilage, and is being taken forward by Orthox Ltd, which recently secured significant seed finance.
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MEDIA
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Audio
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