The regular movement of a joint, such as a person walking, can cause the PLLA scaffold to generate a weak but steady electrical field that encourages cells to colonize it and grow into cartilage. When it is squeezed, it produces a little burst of electrical current. The nanomaterial has a neat property called piezo-electricity. ![]() They designed a tissue scaffold made out of nanofibers of poly-L lactic acid (PLLA), a biodegradable polymer often used to stitch up surgical wounds. Nguyen’s lab has also been working on cartilage regeneration, and they’ve discovered that electrical signals are key to normal growth. It breaks, under the normal stresses of the joint,” says UConn bioengineer Thanh Nguyen, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “The regrown cartilage doesn’t behave like native cartilage. But neither of these approaches works, even in combination. Some researchers have tried amplifying chemical growth factors to induce the body to grow cartilage on its own other attempts rely on a bioengineered scaffold to give the body a template for the fresh tissue. The best possible treatment would be to regrow healthy cartilage in the damaged joint itself. The tissue scaffold (courtesy of Thanh Nguyen) If it’s your own, transplanting it could injure the place it was taken from if it’s from someone else, your immune system is likely to reject it. But healthy cartilage is in limited supply. The best treatments available try to replace the damaged cartilage with a healthy piece taken from elsewhere in the body or a donor. As cartilage deteriorates, bone begins to hit bone, and everyday activities like walking become terribly painful. Normally pads of cartilage cushion those spots. UConn bioengineers successfully regrew cartilage in a rabbit’s knee, a promising hop toward healing joints in humans, they report in the January 12 issue of Science Translational Medicine.Īrthritis is a common and painful disease caused by damage to our joints.
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