

“It doesn’t just cause pain, it also creates problems carrying out simple, everyday activities such as walking, climbing stairs, bending, squatting and kneeling. “Damage to the cartilage in our knees can have a big impact on quality of life,” says Dr.
#STEM CELL TREATMENT FOR KNEE CARTILAGE TRIAL#
The goals are to manufacture clinical grade product, carry out extensive studies to demonstrate safety of the approach, and then file an IND application with the FDA, requesting permission to test the product in a clinical trial in people. This is a late-stage pre-clinical program. In contrast to current methods, this new treatment could be an off-the-shelf approach that would be less costly, easier to administer, and might also reduce the likelihood of progression to osteoarthritis.

Based on scientific data, the seeded scaffold has the potential to regenerate the damaged cartilage, thus decreasing the likelihood of progression to knee osteoarthritis. The scaffold is then surgically implanted at the site of damage in the knee. Frank Petrigliano, Chief of the Epstein Family Center for Sports Medicine at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), is using pluripotent stem cells to create chondrocytes (the cells responsible for cartilage formation) and then seeding those onto a scaffold. That’s why the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) today voted to invest almost $6 million in an innovative stem cell therapy approach to helping restore articular cartilage in the knee.ĭr. Knee replacement surgery can be effective, but is a serious, complicated procedure with a long recovery time. Current treatments are either palliative or involve surgical approaches that have drawbacks in terms of technical feasibility, cost and overall effectiveness. population suffers from knee osteoarthritis, a condition in which a prior cartilage injury progresses to the loss of both cartilage and bone in the joint, causing pain and disability.
