MUMBAI: A team of researchers from IIT-Bombay has developed the first-ever indigenous biodegradable screws that can be used to fix bone and soft tissue injuries .Commonly used bone screws ( implants ) made of metals can impede bone growth, especially in children. Biodegradable screws degrade over time and do not interfere with bone growth. These also reduce the risk of infection.Though imported biodegradable screws are used extensively in India, they are expensive.To bring down the cost of surgery and help injuries heal faster, researchers at IIT-Bombay developed the screws using localized biomaterial such as magnesium oxide and silk that have unique customizable mechanic and biodegradable properties. The research carried out by Ajay Suryavanshi, Kunal Khanna, Sindhu K R, Jayesh Bellare and Rohit Srivastava was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research and was recently published in the journal Biomedical Materials. The team is now looking at transferring the technology to an industry.Srivastava, who is from the institute’s bioscience and bioengineering department, said the basic material used in making the imported screws was expensive. “Each screw costs around Rs 15,000 to Rs 16,000 and in a surgery, where three to four screws are required, the cost goes up significantly. Though it has tremendous advantages over metallic screws, surgeons preferred to not use them,” he said.The team had difficulty initially in choosing a material that can have enough strength to hold the bone tissues together and should also be biocompatible. In the beginning, they used a polymer (polycaprolactone), which was very soft. It was later decided to fill this polymer with biocompatible material such as magnesium oxide and reinforced it with silk, which is widely used in sutures. The magnesium oxide provided strength, while silk enhanced elasticity.Suryavanshi said, “Other imported polymers take more time to degrade than the desired bone healing rate. The degradation of our product can be tuned as per requirement.” The team has already filed for patent. “Developing these low-cost resorbable orthopaedic fixation devices matching international standards can make high-quality medical care devices affordable to the masses. This technology can now provide a platform to manufacture various other implants such as suture anchors, bone plates, etc at an affordable rate,” said Suryavanshi. But the bone screws have limited application in heavy-weight bearing surgeries such as knee and hip surgeries.Dr Sanjay Agarwala, director, and head of orthopaedic surgery at P D Hinduja Hospital, said bone injuries have varying healing period. “If the biodegradable screws can serve this function, it is a welcome research,” he said. Dr Dinesh Lokhande, professor and heady of surgery, Bombay Veterinary College, said, “The screws will dissolve automatically and there will be no need to remove the implant after a while, especially in strays.”