Taiwanese company working on novel brain surgery material

 2013/04/16 16:38:14Photo courtesy of the Industrial Technology Research Institute Taipei, April 16 (CNA) A Taiwanese biomedical company said Monday that it is working on a technology that it hopes will make doctors' jobs easier when they perform brain surgery.Liao Chun-jen, CEO of Taiwan Biomaterial Company, said his company is developing a new substitute for dura, the outermost of three fibrous membranes sheathing the brain and lining the inner surface of the skull.The dura is often damaged when the skull is opened, and surgeons use dura substitutes to repair the damage.Liao said his company has obtained two patents from the Industrial Technology Research Institute in a technology transfer."In the initial stage, we'll target developing the technology and then enter clinical trials in two to three years," he said at the opening of his company's new facility in the Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park in northern Taiwan.The company, which has paid-in capital of NT$35 million (US$1.7 million), has a staff of five.Two kinds of dura substitutes are already commercially available on the market, said Taiwan Biomaterial COO Chen Ping-chuan, but they have disadvantages.One, made of a non-degradable polymer, has to be sutured to surrounding dura, "which is very technique-sensitive, time-consuming and labor-intensive for the clinical surgeon," Chen told CNA.The other, composed of a biodegradable collagen with a porous structure, is directly applied on the top of the brain without sutures.But according to Chen, "there are issues such as displacement and CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leakage in actual clinical applications."The foamy dura substitute technology developed by Liao and his team is a mixture of neutral collagen gel and liquid gas, the COO said.The foamy structure is created by the rapid expansion inside the collagen gel after it is released from its high pressure container, forming a dura substitute with high porosity."This technology (will) not only overcome the displacement issue," Chen said, but will also be more reliable because of its simplicity and more user-friendly in terms of reducing risks and raising the success rate of surgery.