Dr. Prabaha Sikder, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded new funding from the National Institutes of Health to improve the treatment of severe muscle loss injuries. The $3 million, five-year R01 award from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is titled “An Intelligent Biorobot for the Regenerative Rehabilitation of Volumetric Muscle Loss Defects.” 

Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML) refers to severe musculoskeletal injuries that result in significant and irrecoverable loss of skeletal muscle tissue. Dr. Sikder will work alongside Dr. Chandra Kothapalli, Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and Dr. Koyal Garg from Saint Louis University. Read more here. 

Prabaha Sikder’s second NIH award focuses on 3D printed dental implants that prevent post-implant infections.

Dr. Sikder, was also awarded $3.2 million in funding over five years from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled, “Multi-functional 3D Printed Dental Implants for Preventing Peri-implantitis.” The research focuses on developing a unique multi-functional 3D printed dental implant that will effectively minimize peri-implantitis, i.e., dental implant-related infection incidences for patients needing artificial tooth/teeth. This unique infection-resistant and bioactive dental implant can also be tailored according to patient defects and will relieve patients from the aftermaths of infections, such as surgical pain, repeated clinic visits for treatment, prolonged recovery time, reliability on antibiotics, and added therapy costs.

As with much of Dr. Sikder’s research, the new technology is targeted for translation out of the lab and into practice. This work will be performed in collaboration with world-class engineers and renowned scientists Dr Marco C. Bottino at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and Dr. Lukasz Witek at New York University, School of Dentistry. Read more here.