UA Little Rock Gets $5.6M Grant for Bone Regeneration Tech

The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock a $5.6 million grant for its NuCress scaffold, a bone regeneration technology. 

The NuCress scaffold is an implantable device that promotes controlled, robust bone regeneration in fractures, gaps where bone is missing and major injury defects, including previously untreatable catastrophic injuries, according to a news release. 

The device degrades as the bone regenerates, potentially eliminating the need for multiple surgeries, which is a major source of complications in current bone gap treatments. 

The scaffold is in the final stages of moving from the laboratory to the surgical theater, with potential future uses in both military and civilian hospitals, according to the release.

The four-year grant from the DOD’s Joint Warfighter Medical Research Program will help facilitate this transition by funding critical go-to-market research, including manufacturing and FDA clearance. 

The grant also brings together an interdisciplinary team comprised of researchers from UA Little Rock, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to work on the project.