Now 3D print and crocodile cartilage can repair joints in no time

Treating arthritis and joint injuries will get easier, pain less and fast by this unique way of using 3D print, crocodile cartilage and human stem cells to cure your joints.

By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | | Updated: August 7, 2018 12:37 pm

For sports lovers who injured their joints or had arthritis and had no chance of getting back to the field soon following an arthroscopic surgery, this is great news. You may get a chance to avoid this painful process of mending your joints where the cartilage of a person’s damaged joint is treated with an endoscope inserted into the injured joint via a small incision. All thanks to Dr Pardraig Strappe, a microbiologist from central Queensland who is making use of 3D printing, human stem cells and crocodile cartilage for a new way of treating arthritis and joint injuries. This novel procedure will not only minimise the pain involved in arthroscopic surgery but will also curb the time taken to recover.

Along with a team of researchers from CQ University, Dr Strappe is working on a process that draws out growth factors from crocodile cartilage and clears away the proteins that set off a human immune response. This process can successfully turn human stem cells into cartilage, claim the researchers. “That gives us a soup or a glue that might promote our own adult stem cells, stem cells we take from fat tissue or bone marrow, to become cartilage. We hope that might promote cartilage repair, which is a big challenge and becoming more so in elderly populations,”said Dr Pardraig Strappe, according to a report by 3D Print.Com.

He added: “What we’re looking for is a long-term repair to the cartilage so people can return to work and to sport much faster and they don’t have the long-term effects of inflamed joints.”

The report states that Dr Strappe got inspiration from a study conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) that placed crocodiles at the top in terms of the levels of growth promoting proteoglycan in the cartilage. Dr Strappe said: “A crocodile has very big articulating joints so it needs a lot of cartilage to maintain that movement.”

Explaining the process to 3D Print.Com, Dr Strappe added: “’If you have a traumatic injury to the articulating joint, particularly the knee, you are left with a crack or a fissure and that doesn’t have an endogenous repair system because cartilage doesn’t have a blood supply. You are left with a hole that needs to be filled in. With 3D printing we can mimic that hole or that gap so potentially the orthopaedic surgeon could fill in that gap with a little cartilage explant to repair the joint.”

Image Source: Shutterstock

Published: August 7, 2018 12:36 pm | Updated:August 7, 2018 12:37 pm

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