REGENERATION OF KNEE CARTILAGE DEFECTS: HUMAN CLINICAL TRIALS

Osteoarthritis (OA) results from aging joints, injury, and obesity, emerging as an epidemic joint disease in addition to being a significant cause of pain disability. Despite decades of efforts from scientists and physicians, the trend of the global increase in the incidence of OA does not slow down. As there are no effective pharmacotherapies able to reverse the degenerative process, cell-based and biological therapies for OA were invented and developed into a thriving field of regenerative medicine for orthopedics. First, autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) has been used to treat osteoarticular defects for over two decades. While ACI has demonstrated its capability to decelerate OA progression, there are still many issues that hamper its therapeutic efficacy. Therefore, researchers and physicians invented innovative biomaterials-assisted cell therapies, advanced surgical techniques for preserving primary chondrocytes’ biological function and avoiding the donor-site mortality. Later, the discovery of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) revoluted cell therapies for cartilage repair. MSCs not only provide an alternative cell source with much higher proliferation rates but also have these advantages: no donor-site mortality, non-tumorigenic, and, most importantly, the capability of chondrogenic differentiation. This review paper explores the challenges associated with OA treatments using cell-based therapies and shares our vision for the future development of regenerative medicine for cartilage.