3rd Product

Fixation of small bones is complicated by the difficulty in using screws and pins, and complication rates due to misalignment and non-unions are as high as 62%.  A practical bone-adhesive agent would provide a simple and rapid method to achieve anatomic reduction of even the most comminuted fractures.  Many bone adhesives have been utilized over the years, with limited success.  Most are cements with minimal adhesive properties, which bond surfaces together by interlocking into pores and imperfections in the surfaces of the underlying bone.  The primary flaw in all these products is the inability of the adhesive to resorb over time and transition the wound to natural healed bone without a loss in strength. Cohera has been awarded an SBIR grant to develop a small bone adhesive that chemically bonds with adjacent bone and resorbs in a timely fashion to allow normal bone healing.  Testing of the strength of glued lap joints in porcine bones revealed that the adhesive under development exhibits significant strength and adherence to bone, suggesting that it could be quite useful for fixation of small bones where mechanical fixation is problematic or impossible.