The body cannot heal damage to cartilage, and such defects eventually progress to joint osteoarthritis, impacting more than 5.6 million Americans. Current approaches to repairing cartilage have issues in the quality of the repaired tissue, potential treatment variability, costs, and long wait times for patients. University of Utah Health researcher Makoto Kondo, PhD, and colleagues combined two cutting-edge methods to address these issues: (1) cell sheet technology, which generates sheets of cells to replace or repair damaged tissue; and (2) human juvenile chondrocyte sourcing, which harvests juveniles’ cartilage-generating cells (more active than adults’) from otherwise-discarded surgical byproducts. Early research has demonstrated the safety and efficacy of the engineered juvenile chondrocyte sheets. The juvenile cells generated tissue quickly, permitting large-scale production of cell sheets. Transplanting the sheets into rats with cartilage damage led to cartilage regeneration and rapid functional recovery. This approach overcomes the issues of other therapeutic options, enabling reliable and sustainable regenerative treatment for cartilage injuries. Further research will examine the complicated regenerative mechanism behind this method’s success and pioneer its application in humans. 

References:

U of U Health Key Faculty Collaborators:

Travis Maak, MD, Department of Orthopaedics
Jeffrey Weiss, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering
David Grainger, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics
Teruo Okano, PhD, Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics

Engineered Human Juvenile Chondrocyte Sheets Safely Repair Damaged Cartilage | PI: Makoto Kondo, PhD