Engineered Cartilage Progress
Good news from EurekAlert! on the topic of tissue engineered cartilage with possible application to repair age-damaged joints: "engineered cartilage tissue can grow and mature when implanted into patients with a knee injury. The novel tissue engineering approach can lead to cartilage regeneration even in knees affected by osteoarthritis. The tissue engineering method used in this study involved isolating cells from healthy cartilage removed during surgery from 23 patients with an average age of 36 years. After growing the cells in culture for 14 days, the researchers seeded them onto [scaffolds] and then implanted them into the injured knees of the study patients. Cartilage regeneration was seen in ten of 23 patients, including in some patients with pre-existing early osteoarthritis of the knee secondary to traumatic injury. Maturation of the implanted, tissue-engineered cartilage was evident as early as 11 months after implantation."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/uob-bti070306.php