Tissue scaffold

A collaboration between Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has led to the development of a tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into the knees and other joints.

The scaffold could offer a potential treatment for sports injuries and other cartilage damage, such as arthritis.

'If someone had a damaged region in the cartilage, you could remove the cartilage and the bone below it and put our scaffold in the hole,' said Lorna Gibson, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and a member of the team that developed the scaffold, working with Prof William Bonfield at Cambridge.

The scaffold technology has been licensed to Orthomimetics, a British company launched by one of Gibson's collaborators, Andrew Lynn of Cambridge University. The company recently received approval to start clinical trials in Europe.

The scaffold has two layers - one that mimics bone and one that mimics cartilage. When implanted into a joint, the scaffold can stimulate mesenchymal stem cells in the bone marrow to produce new bone and cartilage. The technology is currently limited to small defects, using scaffolds roughly 8mm in diameter.