Nature of the project:
Project funded by the French Research Agency (ANR) (2015-2019)

Summary of the project:
Microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) appears like the next generation of biorefinery high value added product. During the last decade, the interest towards these new bio-based materials exponentially increased due to their outstanding properties and the announced industrialization in 2011. In this project, we intend to use this MFC to develop a novel class of biomaterial substrate device with controlled release of active molecules for improving soft tissue repair. It will offer clear and expected solutions for addressing remaining clinical needs, such as infection, pain and recurrence. Indeed soft tissue repair is one of the major business activities of the medical device industry. It mainly comprises ventral and inguinal hernia repair devices, with a worldwide market over 3 billions € with a mean annual growth rate at 8%. Infection remains the #1 concern for surgeons and healthcare authorities for all soft tissue surgeries. These complications lead to unacceptably high medico-social costs, with re-do surgeries, medical treatments, loss of quality of life and, particularly for oncologic surgeries, reduced life expectancy. Given the importance of these medico-socio payloads, there is clear need for soft tissue repair solutions controlling the local delivery of antiseptics for infection control or analgesics for pain control. Both antiseptics or drugs with different modes of action will be chosen and immobilized (adsorbed or grafted) thanks to the microfibrillated cellulose treated medical device. First, different pre-treatments of biomass, and more precisely cellulose, will be studied to optimize preparation of high-quality grade MFC. In the meantime, active bioconjugates will be synthesized with innovative chemical ligation of oligosaccharides with active molecules. Subsequently, medical devices will be prepared following different possibilities (multilayer or 100% MFC system). The efficiency of the final materials and drug release studies will help confirming the promising effect within a demonstrator material. The main idea is to start from biomass (1 industrial partner, 1 start-up) to biomedical applications (1 industrial partner) with using, functionalizing and characterizing the MFC based substrate (1 technical center & 3 laboratories).