Miyamoto Shinji, PhD; Nakayama Yasuhide, PhD; Yambe Tomoyuki, PhD; Tajikawa Tsutomu, PhD; Iwai Ryosuke, PhD; Takeshi Terazawa, PhD
Competition Sponsor: Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development
It’s most reassuring if you can use your own tissues for implantation treatment. However, the amount and type of your own tissues available for implantation in the body is limited. In-body tissue architecture (iBTA) is an innovative concept of regenerative medicine technology that allows free preparation of tissues for autologous implantation in the patient’s own body. Implantable tissues consisting only of autologous tissues — with no artificial materials — can be obtained by implanting designed molds under the skin of a patient for about one month. When the resulting iBTA-induced tissues are implanted they survive and regenerate within a few months. They are then metabolized and grow as part of the patient’s own body. iBTA-induced tissues are self-sustaining over a lifetime: They do not require proven durability in the same sense as does an artificial medical device.
Furthermore, iBTA technology can easily prepare tissues that cannot be completely cured by existing medical technology or cannot be created by the latest regenerative medicine technology. Therefore, iBTA technology can overcome many, even intractable, diseases. It can help many disabled people, many people with congenital irregularities, and can promote better health in many older people. The first goal is to provide the world’s smallest-diameter iBTA-induced blood vessel, named Biotube, to rescue patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia from amputation. After that, we aim to expand the technology to the regeneration of other tissues and to make this technology a general treatment overseas, mainly in developing countries such as Southeast Asia and Africa.