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Treatments for Severe Arthritis
Current standard of care for severe knee joint arthritis is either total knee
replacement or unicondylar knee replacement. Although these artificial knee
replacements reduce pain and restore basic function, they severely limit a patients
range of activities and as mechanical synthetic devices; have limited functional
life spans, usually less than 20 years. Artificial knee replacement is a costly
inpatient procedure, performed through open surgery.
Previous efforts to replace the damaged cartilage with human articular cartilage
called an allograft have had success but are limited by the small amount of young
healthy human cartilage available and the perceived need to have fresh tissue with
live donor cells.
The Articular Cartilage Shell Graft Study
We have previously demonstrated that we can overcome two of the major barriers to
cartilage resurfacing:
1) We have stripped the antigens from animal cartilage
2) We have loaded human stem cells into the intact cartilage grafts
Therefore we have designed this next study to answer the question:
Can we use young healthy cartilage tissue loaded with
human stem cells to resurface arthritic joints?
If so, then an outpatient operation with a potential significantly lower cost and morbidity may be available.
Why This Study Is Important
Treatment options for knee joint arthritis are severely limited. Continual degeneration
leads to severe pain, loss of activity and eventual prosthetic knee replacement.
The Articular Cartilage Shell Graft Study will address the clinical viability of using
articular cartilage shell grafts from pigs, seeded with adult mesenchymal stem cells, for
biological resurfacing of the knee.
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