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Media Release

January 14 2009

UniSA breaks ground on bone growth research

Prof Cory Xian heads up a team carrying out exciting bone repair research at UniSAWith many young South Aussie kids taking to the roads on their bikes with dreams of becoming the next Lance Armstrong, it might be reassuring for parents to know that a team of UniSA researchers is tackling the age-old problem of childhood bone injury repair.

Based at UniSA’s Sansom Institute and led by Associate Professor Cory Xian, the team is undertaking ground-breaking research into understanding normal bone growth, growth plate injuries, and bone defects caused by growth through injury and cancer chemotherapy.

“Our team has been based here at UniSA for just one year, but already we’ve carried out some interesting work,” Prof Xian said.

“We’re working in a number of areas - particularly we’re looking at the mechanism for normal bone growth and bone mass accumulation and how micro-nutrients could potentially be used to achieve healthy bone growth and accumulate optimum bone mass in children to avoid osteoporosis in later life.”

Prof Xian says the team is also behind some promising research into growth plate injury repair.

“Growth plates are unique to children; they’re a special cartilaginous tissue responsible for normal bone growth and if they get damaged they don’t heal properly and can lead to serious defects in bone growth,” Prof Xian said.

“Essentially we’re investigating why growth plate injuries usually cause bone growth defects in children and we are looking for potential targets for a biological solution to this problem.”

Prof Xian says that of all childhood fractures, about 20 per cent will result in growth plate injuries, of which one third will result in a deformity of some kind.

“At the moment the only way to rectify these defects is through surgery, for example a child might have one leg shorter than the other, and obviously this surgery can be extremely invasive and traumatic for the child,” he said.

“Our team has found that the initial inflammatory response after injury plays an important role in regulating downstream repair outcomes, and we’ve also found that progenitor cells – which are a type of stem cell but with a more specific purpose – infiltrate the injury site too and might play a role in developing different repair tissues.

“So there’s a possibility that if we can manipulate these progenitor cells to do what we want, then we might be able to produce a more desirable outcome in the healing process.

“If the research leads to a reduction in the need for surgery, it’s a very positive development.”
The team is also breaking ground in protecting bone growth during childhood cancer treatment.
“Luckily, childhood cancer has a very good survival rate these days but the downside is that chemotherapy often causes long-term damage to bones,” Prof Xian said.

“We’re trying to discover why chemotherapy has this side effect and already we’ve found that some natural substances can protect bone growth during chemotherapy, so hopefully our ongoing research will shed even more positive results.”

But the good work doesn’t end there, with Prof Xian and his team now commencing research into managing bone pain after injuries or surgery without the need for Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs (NSAID) which have proven to inhibit bone repair in the past.

“Conventional NSAID drugs are effective in managing pain by reducing inflammation, but have the downside of impairing bone repair.

“If we can find a new target for pain relief without interfering the healing process, there’s a good chance we can improve healthy, normal bone repair,” Prof Xian said.


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