The joints are among the first parts of the body to suffer the inevitable ravages of aging, the cartilage can break during sports or to wear down over the years due to usage. Currently, scientists are experimenting with a combination of stem cells and novel structural materials designed to mimic real tissue, hoping to disappear for the pain that accompanies this problem and perhaps prevent the emergence of achieving arthritis.
In animal models, these transplants appear to stimulate the regeneration of cartilage that is more like natural tissue.
The cartilage damage often leads to osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that affects about half of the population aged 65 years. Existing treatments for these small problems usually require cartilage inflict further damage to the diseased joint, or cartilage cells transplant, called chondrocytes, obtained from a healthy joint, developed in form of culture and injected into the damaged area. Both procedures enabled the development of new tissue, a cartilage-like version of a scar, more fibrous than normal cartilage and that usually does not have the same durability.
In an attempt to actually regenerate cartilage rather than patch it, Rocky Tuan, director of the Cartilage Biology and Orthopedics Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Baltimore, and colleagues developed a nanofiber structure similar structurally to extracellular matrix, a fibrous material that provides support to the body’s connective tissue. The structure generated by electrospinning, a process imported textiles. The researchers applied a strong electric field to a liquid polymer, which is elongated fibers in an attempt to dissipate the load.
The nanoscale structure of the material is the key experiments have indicated that cells grow better in a nanoscale fiber structure in a millimeter scale made of the same metral.
The structures are created from mesenchymal stem cells (adult stem cells derived from bone marrow, fatty tissue or other sources and can differentiate between muscle, bone, fat and cartilage). “The advantage is that it is not necessary for damage other tissue cells,” says Tuan.
