What is GRIBOI?
GRIBOI is an acronym for the “Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Biomatériaux Ostéo-articulaires Injectables” (Interdisciplinary Research Society for Bone and Joint Injectable Biomaterials). It was originally set up in 1989 as an informal group of clinicians from Northern France who were concerned with minimally-invasive bone therapies based on percutaneous injection of bone substitutes. This group of clinicians included Hervé DERAMOND (Amiens) and Hervé LECLET (Berck) radiologists, Bernard DUQUESNOY (Lille) a rheumatologist and Pierre HARDOUIN (Berck) a rheumatologist and researcher in the biomaterials field. At this time the concept of “injectable biomaterials” in orthopaedics was new.
The best known of such therapies is Acrylic Vertebroplasty (AVP), which was being initiated at this time by Prof Deramond, who was the first President of GRIBOI, and his group at Amiens. Although the use of PMMA as a bone substitute is still highly relevant for the palliative treatment of collapsed osteoporotic or metastatic vertebrae, new more sophisticated, resorbable and osteoconductive materials have now come into existence.
The initiators of GRIBOI realized very soon the great promise of injectable bone grafting materials for future clinical applications, for they open new avenues to preventive bone therapies. However, their success relies on a subtle alchemy of optimal material performance, adequate surgical technique and long-term favourable biological and biomechanical responses; hence, the development of efficient therapies based on injectable bone materials is obviously a demanding interdisciplinary work well beyond the exclusive expertise of clinicians. Therefore, members of GRIBOI decided many years ago to broaden its membership to non-medical people, including biologists, materials scientists, engineers and others. This is a consequence of the increasing popularity of the concept of “Injectable Bone Materials”, which has been gaining more and more credibility and international recognition since the early 1990’s. This also manifests the will of GRIBOI to open its membership to the international community of physicians, biologists, engineers and industrial companies active in the field of mini-invasive skeletal therapies.