Natural biomaterials inherently provide biological signals and stimuli. When chosen properly, those natural properties aid in different types of healing. With some amount of hard work, synthetic materials can be modified to mimic some of these natural signals. Cen Chen, et al., have produced an open access review in Biomaterials Research that summarizes the presentations from a 2015 Korea-China joint symposium on biomimetic materials. Their paper does not focus on natural materials, but illustrates the amount of work put in…
We discussed in an earlier post the application of natural polymers in clinical treatment of osteoarthritis and other injuries to articular cartilage. Those current therapies are all limited to treating small lesions or holes of only a few millimeters across. Material challenges remain when larger, curved areas of cartilage need to be regenerated in joints. Larger scaffold constructs are more difficult to evenly seed with cells, and are also prone to shrinking and changing shape as the cells grow inside…
Around 250,000 surgeries to repair articular cartilage are performed each year. Most of the damage surgeons are trying to fix begin as small lesions. Without treatment, small lesions become large holes that allow the bones of the joint to grind together. Sometimes these lesions are due to injury, but osteoarthritis is a large cause. Current Cartilage Repair If the lesion is small enough, the fix is just cleaning up the lesion by removing ragged tissue and waiting for healing to happen on…