Magneto-patterning technique grows new cartilage

The advance from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania could lead longer lasting treatments to injuries including cartilage degeneration. The team’s findings are published in Advanced Materials.

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"We found that we were able to arrange objects, such as cells, in ways that could generate new, complex tissues without having to alter the cells themselves," said the study's first author, Hannah Zlotnick, who works in the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory at Penn Medicine. "Others have had to add magnetic particles to the cells so that they respond to a magnetic field, but that approach can have unwanted long-term effects on cell health. Instead, we manipulated the magnetic character of the environment surrounding the cells, allowing us to arrange the objects with magnets."

Cartilage break down can be treated with synthetic or biologic materials that eventually wear away from an already complex tissue.