Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation

Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation for the near-term translation of regenerative medicine technologies for the treatment of civilian blast injuries.

Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation is a NGO founded in 2011 by Sir Bobby Charlton, with the mission to assist those affected by conflict with humanitarian and development assistance, education, and research.

Since 2017 our team leads an SBC Foundation funded grant that develops technologies for robust engineering of bone grafts with controlled geometry, with the ultimate goal of advancing tissue engineering strategies to produce high quality bone in the lab – living bone grafts ­­– with modifiable shapes to be used in blast injuries, providing a solution for reconstructive applications. Our approach to grow bone in the lab involves the use of a combination of acellular and stem cell-based technologies to produce high quality bone grafts in the lab that can be implanted in an injured patient to regenerate missing bone. We hope this technology will allow to grow large pieces of bone in different anatomical locations, e.g. in the skull, legs, face, fingers etc and that this will constitute a significant improvement in the quality of life of those affected by blast injuries. This project includes plans for a First-In-Human clinical trial with a system based on pre-differentiated stem cells using our nanovibrational stimulation technology.