The competition, announced by the IIF FROM September 14, 2021, is aimed at supporting innovative projects implemented in the Samara region, the result of which should be new promising, competitive scientific and technical solutions in three thematic and sectoral areas, the most relevant and promising not only for our province, but also for the whole country. These are photonics, technological solutions in the aerospace field and personal medical assistants. In total, nine projects were submitted to the competition, and a joint project of TSU and SamSMU scientists was among the four winners.
- There is such a type of cancer – sarcoma, a malignant tumor affecting the skeleton of children and adolescents. Most often it develops near the knee joint in the lower part of the femur or in the upper part of the lower leg. The only way to preserve the quality of life after the removal of such a tumor is oncological endoprosthetics, - said Sergey Peteraitis, Vice-rector for Scientific and Innovative Development of TSU– - But such endoprostheses are not produced in Russia. The monopolist in this area is now actually the UK. The design is very complex and expensive: the cost of an endoprosthesis reaches 20 thousand pounds. In addition, in the process of maturation and growth of the patient, alignment of the limbs is required, therefore correction (elongation) of the previously implanted prosthesis is also necessary. Equipment that allows you to do this non-invasively will cost another 30 thousand pounds.
Specialists from TSU, in collaboration with doctors of SamSMU, managed to create a domestic analogue of an endoprosthesis with precision (high-precision) personal control of the correction process, the cost of which is significantly lower than foreign products. IIF experts unanimously recognized the development as one of the best in the competition, allocating a grant of 2.5 million rubles to scientists.
The production of such "growing" endoprostheses on the territory of Russia, in particular, in the Samara region, will completely avoid import dependence.
The TSU endoprosthesis is designed for the knee joint, but in the future scientists plan to create similar devices for shoulder, hip and other joints and patent their invention.