Design SuperiorBiomaterials Fast WithPhysics-Driven Simulation
A design assistant that co-optimizes every requirement at once, finding the right material chemistry, structure and processing parameters.
Create thousands of digital twins, simulate mechanics, degradation, transport and tissue response in the body, then test only the most promising ones.
Trial and error, balancing many conflicting requirements
Open the pores and the strength goes with them. Stiffen it and the body walls it off. Slow the resorption and the ingrowth stalls. Then whatever works still has to be mouldable on the tooling you own, pass biocompatibility, and come out of sterilization unchanged.
The project
A new R&D project is defined.
The targets
Target properties are defined, and they conflict. Fixing one ruins another.
The search
Millions of candidate designs, because every composition can be built in many structures. With prototype tooling and bench time, only a few are ever made.
The risk
A working design is only the start. These three are targets of their own, optimised for last when the design is hardest to change. Any one can end the program.
Backbond co-optimizes for all the targets simultaneously
The same four steps, answered. Backbond hands the team a short list of designs that already hit every target and already survive manufacturing, biocompatibility and sterilization.
- Ingrowth
- Define a Number
- Strength
- Define a Number
- Fibrosis
- Define a Number
- Shelf life
- Define a Number
- Handling
- Define a Number
Define
The product, the targets it must hit, and the parameters to change: pore size, porosity, wall thickness, texture pitch.
Simulate
Backbond simulates all possible combinations and evaluates every one.
Rank
The candidate designs are ranked by promise and confidence, and those are not the same thing.
Test
The team proceeds to the bench with the most promising designs. By default, these satisfy all targets and constraints.
Simulation removes the redesign loops, and those are where the years go. The submission clock is unchanged, and no software shortens it.
How Backbond simulates a design candidate
Four levels of physics decide what a design actually does, and Backbond reasons about how all four interplay to set every spec.
A few example use cases
Every one is the same shape: a handful of targets that fight each other, and one design that has to hit them all.
The implant walls off in a thick capsule and stops working. Find the surface topography, polymer and modulus that suppress it, while holding strength, sterilizability and cost.
The pores that let tissue in take the strength out. Find the pore size, gradient and strut geometry that hold both, while keeping mouldability and imaging clearance.
The scaffold disappears before the tissue can carry load. Find the copolymer ratio, wall thickness and crystallinity that slow it, while holding ingrowth, local pH and shelf life.
A drug-eluting coating dumps its dose in the first day. Find the matrix, loading and layer thickness that flatten the curve, while holding adhesion, total dose and sterilization survival.
EtO and gamma change the polymer the design depends on. Find the material and cure that survive both, while holding modulus, degradation rate and residual limits.
The device is stiffer than the tissue and erodes into it. Find the material and cross-section that match compliance, while holding fatigue life, deliverability and radiopacity.
The coating cracks off after repeated flexing. Find the primer, thickness and cross-link density that hold adhesion, while keeping lubricity, elution profile and biocompatibility.
The device drifts out of spec before it is ever opened. Find the polymer, barrier and packaging that hold it to expiry, while keeping flexibility, sterility and cost.
The leaflet stiffens with calcium and fails early. Find the treatment chemistry and surface state that resist it, while holding durability, thrombogenicity and crimp recovery.
The medical-grade resin is delisted. Find a replacement and process window that hold every validated spec, without reopening biocompatibility or sterilization.
The future of the device R&D organization
How Optagon Labs imagines the device company of the future, drawn from work with hundreds of R&D teams: one brain coordinating specialised agents that work in parallel, running development end to end across the portfolio.
Coordinating work across every function