Technical / White Paper
Bioreactor based engineering of large-scale cartilage grafts for joint resurfacing
Apart from partial or total joint replacement, no surgical procedure is currently available to treat large and deep cartilage defects associated with advanced diseases such as osteoarthritis. In this work, we developed a perfusion bioreactor system to engineer human cartilage grafts in a size with clinical relevance for unicompartmental resurfacing of a human knee joint.
This work is the first report of engineered cartilage tissues generated in this large scale. Ongoing efforts are aimed at integrating the up-scaled bioreactor within a fully automated and closed manufacturing system for safe, standardized, and GMP compliant production of large-scale engineered cartilage grafts.
