Cell therapy for cartilage repair (1/11/2007)
PhD student Jeanine Hendriks of University of Twente’s Institute for Biomedical Technology has developed a better method of growing cartilage.
Previous methods seem to be less useful that originally thought. The newly grown cartilage seems to be different from original cartilage tissue, and the tissue performs worse than the original.
The new technique requires adding primary cells, that still know how to form a cartilage matrix, to the cultured cells. The proteoglycanes within this matrix are capable of binding water: if cartilage is under pressure, this water is squeezed out, when the pressure lowers, the water is absorbed back into the matrix. This improves the flexibility of cartilage substantially, and is one of its unique features.
In tissue engineering, cells from a biopsy are cultured for several weeks. After that, the cells are injected underneath a piece of cell membrane, and the defect is repaired. The cells form cartilage tissue. In the lab this works fine, but the cells aren’t able to form the desired matrix structures.
By mixing cultured cells with primary chrondocytes that haven’t been cultured yet, she is able to stimulate the cells into forming a matrix. By allowing the primary and cultured cells to interact, a matrix will be formed. This is more than creating an ideal growth environment. It is the cell-to-cell interaction that seems to make the process work.
Hendriks wants to seed the cells on a carrier, a so-called scaffold. This is the same technique that is used in tissue engineering, the main difference is that Hendriks wants to implant the scaffold immediately after seeding and let them grow inside the patients body, while in tissue engineering, cells usually are cultured outside the body.
After finishing her PhD work, Jeanine Hendriks wants to further develop the clinical procedures, within her company CellCoTec.
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Comments:
| 1. |
sally coupal |
2/6/2007 1:57:07 PM MST |
i would like to be kept advised as to when practical application is nearing and if your company is available for trading on U.S. exchanges,
Sally coupal
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