NIT Jalandhar& IIT Hyderabad Researchers Develop Bone Substitutes from Eggshells
IIT Hyderabad and NIT Jalandhar students developed a method to prepare bone implants from eggshells without the use of any harmful chemicals as a natural substitute for existing transplant materials.
Research students of NIT Janalndar & IIT Hyderabad invented a new process to synthesis bone transplant materials from waste material that is eggshells. The main motive of the team was to find a natural substitute for bone transplants as the current transplant materials are entirely made up of chemicals. Beta-tricalcium phosphate or Beta TCP is the most prevalent bone substitute that is made up of natural sources, free from chemicals and other toxic materials.
Joint Venture of NIT & IIT research experts led to this innovation. Here are the names of some specialists involved in this unique research work -
- Mr Roopavanth Uday Kiran, Department of Biomedical Engineering, IIT- H
- Dr Mahesh Kumar Sah, Department of Biomedical Engineering, NIT-J
- Dr Bharat Panigarhi, Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT-H
- Dr Subha N Rath, Department of Biomedical Engineering, IIT-H
Work of the research team was published in a leading journal Ceramics International- March 2019 edition.
Also Read: Students of IIT Madras Made the Best use of Waste
At present, missing and injured bones can be either be replaced if the patient finds a donor or by implanting calcium-containing artificial substances like calcium phosphate, hydroxyapatite, plaster of Paris etc.
According to the experts, when chemically synthesised materials are used as body transplants, they produce certain toxins in the body that can further create hazardous problems for the patient. Thus, there was a necessity to develop a natural process to do the same, researches used eggshells as it contains approximately 95% of calcium which is the prime element for bones.
After a thermal process famously known as the ball mining, researchers obtained the Beta TCP powder in the nano form, size of one particle is 100 thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. They further made scaffolds with the help of derived materials to evaluate the cellular response, as a result, the derived material performed well enough to replace existing transplant materials.
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It is to see now how this process functions after getting commercialized and how greatly it is suiting the patients suffering from bone damages and related issues.