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Posted on Sep 22, 2002, 11 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
A recent development by scientists at MIT University could make artificial joints a thing of the past and provide a cure for most types of osteoarthritis. Alan Grodzinsky, director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT, and his colleagues have managed to create an engineered tissue that has "mechanical and biochemical properties near to those of native cartilage.
A recent development by scientists at MIT University could make artificial joints a thing of the past and provide a cure for most types of osteoarthritis. Alan Grodzinsky, director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT, and his colleagues have managed to create an engineered tissue that has "mechanical and biochemical properties near to those of native cartilage." The engineered "cartilage" is composed of a gel platform made from biopolymer fibers more than 1,000 times smaller than materials currently in use for tissue engineering. The gel platform is designed to be implanted into damaged joints, and while it is yet to be tested on animals, Grodzinsky and colleagues expect that new cartilage will grow and bond with the surrounding tissue as the gel degrades.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2002; 99: 9996-10001
