Materials for osteosynthesis are constantly evolving to enable improved treatments. To take the field further, an intriguing step is to advance into to the use of bone adhesives. In dentistry, restoration with resin-based adhesives is now gold standard and the concept relies on resin composites and acid etching. The translation of such strategy to fracture fixation is an apparent and natural strategy due to the similarities of the hard tissues. However, the methacrylate resins used in dentistry do not promote high conversion of functional groups at curing and their biocompatibility is hampered from monomers that can leach out and cause toxic responses. Instead, resins based on thiol-ene coupling (TEC) chemistry with a step-wise polymerization that consumes monomers early and have a high gelation point, can enable minimized monomer leach-out and more biocompatible adhesives. Attempts of using TEC for dental restoration and bone fracture fixation have been attempted but sufficient bond strength has not yet been presented in order to realize the clinical use of TEC adhesives. Here, we present a high-performance adhesive system based on fast and efficient light-initiated TEC chemistry. Influenced by dental resins, the development of an acidic self-etching primer and a high modulus resin composite resulted in exceptional bond strength to wet bone pieces. The TEC adhesive was assessed for fracture fixation using the bone patch concept of fiber reinforced adhesive patches (FRAPs), where the adhesive is applied over the fracture with structural fiber sheets to construct a fixating bridge that hold the fractured bone pieces aligned without entering the cross-section of the fracture. The FRAP fixation was mechanically evaluated in ex vivo phalangeal fracture models with results that compete with the stability of metal plate fixators that are clinically used today. Initial safety studies on the material composition display high biocompatibility in both in vitro and in vivo evaluations.

High-performance and biocompatible thiol-ene based adhesive for bone fracture fixation

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.