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For many reasons and at different stages of their lives, people may experience knee pain due to the lack or loss of cartilage tissue in the joints. Researchers are working on a way to use cartilage cells in the nose to repair the knee joint.
In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel collect cartilage cells from the nasal septum in the nose and grow them for use elsewhere in the body as a treatment. “The main benefit sought is the efficient regeneration of the cartilage, as opposed to the substitution by a part of a foreign body”, explains Ivan Martin of the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel for New Scientist.
Unlike the cartilage tissue in joints, these cartilage cells originate from precursor cells and have a distinct regenerative and adaptive capacity, or plasticity, explains Martin in an article. Press release. “Tissues derived from nasal cartilage cells also appear to retain these special properties.”
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Once the nasal cartilage cells have developed into a layer, the researchers surgically implant it in the knee joint. The researchers tested this on animals and also on two patients in their 30s with severe osteoarthritis of the knee.
By using patients’ nasal cartilage, patients reported less pain and a better quality of life. The researchers took MRI images of one of the patient’s knees and found the bones were further apart than before, suggesting the joint was recovering.
Martin said in an interview with STAT that 15 years of research have made it possible to develop this three-dimensional modified cartilage tissue for use in humans. They followed the two patients for two years, who would otherwise have needed knee replacement surgery.
Martin tells STAT that they don’t know what will happen in the long term, but are hoping for combination therapy. “Our results have allowed us to lay the biological foundation for therapy, and we are cautiously optimistic,” Martin said in the press release.
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