BellaSeno Receives Australian Public Grant Totaling AUD 1 Million

• Winner of the Australian Global Innovation Linkages Program
• Funding dedicated to advancing regenerative scaffolds for breast reconstruction and large bone defects
• BellaSeno to lead consortium of renowned commercial and academic partners

BellaSeno GmbH, an ISO 13485-certified medtech company developing absorbable scaffolds using additive manufacturing technologies, today announced that its Australian subsidiary BellaSeno Pty Ltd has been granted AUD 1 million (EUR 625,600) for the development of regenerative scaffolds for breast reconstruction and large bone defects. The grant was provided under the Australian Global Innovation Linkages Program, which is dedicated to help Australian businesses and researchers collaborate with global partners.

The funding will be used for the additive manufacturing of personalized implants and for performing two clinical feasibility studies of regenerative scaffolds for breast reconstruction and large bone defects. These innovative scaffolds will be designed and additively manufactured in Australia and should provide a new medical solution to the hundreds of thousands of breast cancer and bone defects patients. The scaffolds are designed to be fully absorbable and – in the case of bone defects – heavy load bearing and aim to ultimately allow for natural tissue or bone regeneration without leaving any foreign or risky remnants in the body.

For the project, BellaSeno is teaming up with several renowned academic and corporate partners, including Stryker (Germany), Evonik (Germany), the Herston Biofabrication Institute (Australia), the Queensland University of Technology (Australia), St. Luke’s Hospital (Japan), and Ludwig-Maximilians-University Hospital (Germany).

“It is a great honor to lead such a prestigious consortium and we are very pleased about the grant,” said Mohit Chhaya, PhD, Co-founder and CEO of BellaSeno. "Our goal is to further advance novel products in the field of natural tissue and bone reconstruction and  the funding will enable us to further expand our work with the groups of Prof. Michael Wagels, Prof. Dietmar Hutmacher and other key academic and industry partners in this field."

“BellaSeno’s approach is a scientific and technological contribution to establish a radically new healthcare technology in breast and bone rehabilitation," said Distinguished Prof. Dietmar W Hutmacher, Queensland University of Technology. “The ground-breaking nature of this cutting-edge interdisciplinary research program will be a catalyst in advancing and translating a holistic regenerative medicine therapy concept into clinical trials. The grant outcomes will provide unique opportunities to design clinical trials for creating innovative, individualized treatment options for patients.”

Herston Biofabrication Institute Director Dr Michael Wagels said establishing clinical trials of new implantable medical devices was an important step forward. “By establishing clinical trials it facilitates early access to this technology for Queensland patients and allows for these devices to brought efficiently to market, which can benefit everybody,” Dr Wagels said. “We are looking forward to being a critical part of this process, which we hope will solve complex clinical problems and make implants safer by making them more intrinsically part of the patient.”

About Senella^®

Senella^® is a patented porous scaffold made of absorbable Polycaprolactone (PCL) containing highly-specialized topological and design features, which act as recipients for injected fat tissue isolated with a standard liposuction procedure. The implant is designed to get absorbed over a span of two years and to provide a stable platform for the injected fat tissue to mature, adapt to its environment and stabilize. The clinical end result is a natural soft tissue – without remnants of foreign material. Senella^® therefore has the potential to alleviate the complications found in current breast reconstruction and augmentation approaches.