Arthritis is often treated as an inevitable and incurable part of getting older, but new developments in lab-grown cartilage may soon change this. Although yet to be tested in humans, a team from Cytex Therapeutics, a North Carolina-based company that develops bio-artificial devices, believes these advancements may one day eliminate the need for hip replacement surgery in younger arthritis patients.
According to a study released on the innovative new medical device, published in the online journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the cartilage was created using “3D textile technology,” and is made of a patient’s stem cells that have been coaxed to grow into cartilage on a plastic scaffold shaped like the ball of a hip joint.
