ORTHOX, the tissue repair company using silk technology, has announced the award of a prestigious Wellcome Trust Translational Award worth over £1.6 million.
Orthox is developing a range of novel orthopaedic products for the repair of cartilage. The company’s core technology is Spidrex cartilage – a silk biomaterial combining the resilience, high strength and bioresorption found in spider silk. The silk technology is the result of a decade of research by Oxford University scientists, Professor Fritz Vollrath and Dr David Knight. The Wellcome Award will be used to fund the development of Orthox’s regenerative meniscal (knee cartilage) repair device. Commenting on the announcement, Dr Richard Seabrook, head of business development at the Wellcome Trust, said: “Largely thanks to medical advances in recent decades, people are living longer, more active lives. But, coupled with increasing obesity, this means knee problems are now a major issue for health services across the world. The Wellcome Trust appreciates both the need to find a regenerative solution to knee damage and the potential of the Spidrex technology to address an increasingly common, but complex, clinical problem.”
