Innovative Knee Implant May Improve Torn Meniscus Repairs

A new implant which uses reappropriated tissues from pigs to repair meniscus tissue tears could be faster and more effective than traditional tissue patches.

The dCELL decellularization technology involves the removal of cellular material from within animal tissues that would otherwise cause rejection of the implant by human recipients. The stripped tissue thus allows replacement of damaged tissues to serve as a cellular scaffold that is repopulated with the patient’s own stem cells--without using antirejection drugs--to replace worn out or diseased body parts. The technology has been first implemented in the repair of menisci--the C-shaped cartilage that serve as shock absorbers for the knees--using pig cartilage and removing all of the cellular material.

To overcome calcium build-up that hardens the donor tissue, a drawback of current decellularization technology, the new technology uses sodium dodecyl sulphate to disinfect the tissue, instead of glutaraldehyde. The technique, if proven to work, could reduce demand for knee replacement due to severe osteoarthritis (OA), and subsequently reduce the need for knee prostheses. The dCELL decellularization technology is under development by Tissue Regenix (York, United Kingdom), and is currently in preclinical development.

“Given the acceptance of porcine tissue by the medical community, especially in heart valves, safety isn’t a concern,” said Alan Dardik, MD, an associate professor of surgery at Yale University (New Haven, CT, USA), who conducted a recent study of dCELL technology in vascular patches. “It’s extremely similar to human tissue and is implanted thousands of times every day across the world. In the future, there will probably be pig organ transplants. That’s the holy grail of transplant surgery.”

The removal of damaged meniscus tissue is the most common orthopedic procedure in the United States and is a major cause of OA. While replacing damaged meniscus with donor tissue helps reduce pain and restore normal range of motion, a shortage of donors has limited the scope of such operations.

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Tissue Regenix
Yale University