United States: A study on animals showed that a newly developed biomaterial could help to cure terrible arthritis by stimulating the formation of new cartilage cells.
More about the study
Researchers say the biomaterial appears to be a rubbery goo, although it is a complex biological stew to replicate on natural cartilage in the body.
The biomaterial effectively restored high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of sheep in up to six months.
What more have the researchers stated?
If the new material works in humans, it could be applied to osteoarthritis, which forms when bones are rubbed by one another because the cartilage between wears away, researchers said.
That means that biomaterials could totally replace the current treatment of total knee replacement surgery for severe osteoarthritis.
During the surgical procedure, one reshapes and removes the bone ends and replaces them with titanium metal, and the cartilage is replaced with plastic, as newsmax.com reported.
Thus, the latest biomaterial consists of the protein that plays a crucial role in cartilage synthesis and repair and the chemically altered hyaluronic acid found in the cartilage tissue and synovial fluid that lubricates joints.
To assess the biomaterial’s capacity, they inserted it into the stifle joint, which is a significant joint in sheep’s hind limbs and comparable to the knee of humans.
According to the lead researcher and a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, Samuel Stupp, “Cartilage is a critical component in our joints,” and “When cartilage becomes damaged or breaks down over time, it can have a great impact on people’s overall health and mobility.”
Stupp also said in his university release, “The problem is that, in adult humans, cartilage does not have an inherent ability to heal,” and, “Our new therapy can induce repair in a tissue that does not naturally regenerate. We think our treatment could help address a serious, unmet clinical need.”
More about the finding
According to researchers, “Many people are familiar with hyaluronic acid because it’s a popular ingredient in skincare products,” and “It’s also naturally found in many tissues throughout the human body, including the joints and brain. We chose it because it resembles the natural polymers found in cartilage.”
Researchers said the goal was to create an attractive scaffold upon which the body’s cells could regenerate cartilage tissue.
Like sheep cartilage, the stifles of sheep and human knees are not easily regenerated; both joints are alike in weight-bearing, size, and mechanical loads.’
Sometimes, more cartilage growth was observed to have occurred to fill the defects in the existing stifle cartilage; the quality of growth was good in all cases.
Stupp added, “A study on a sheep model is more predictive of how the treatment will work in humans,” and “In other smaller animals, cartilage regeneration occurs much more readily.”
Their findings are reported in the journal’s latest issue, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences USA, dated August 5.
Further, as Stupp mentioned, if it works in humans, the biomaterial could fix “the problem of poor mobility and joint pain for the long term, while also avoiding the need for joint reconstruction with large pieces of hardware,” as newsmax.com reported.