New Breakthrough on Toughing Lab-Grown Tissue

Lab-grown tissues could one day provide new treatments for injuries and damage to the joints, including articular cartilage, tendons and ligaments.
 
 
Lab-Grown Tissue Toughing
Lab-Grown Tissue Toughing
SHIRLEY, N.Y. - Nov. 4, 2014 - PRLog -- It is recently reported that biomedical engineers  published some breakthroughs on exploring ways to toughen up engineered cartilage and keep natural tissues strong outside the body.

Cartilage is a hard material that caps the ends of bones and allows joints to work smoothly. Cartilage is composed of specialized cells called chondrocytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrocyte) that produce a large amount of extracellular matrix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_matrix) composed of collagen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen) fibers, abundant ground substance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_substance) rich in proteoglycan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteoglycan), and elastin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastin) fibers. Collagen is produced by the cells and made up of long fibers that can be cross-linked together. Unlike other connective tissues, cartilage does not contain blood vessels. The chondrocytes are supplied by diffusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion), helped by the pumping action generated by compression of the articular cartilage or flexion of the elastic cartilage. Thus cartilage grows and repairs more slowly than other connective tissues. For some reasons such as aging and injury, cartilage is very potential to get stability decreased or function diminished.

Now researchers are discovering a new method for treating serious joint problems. They have been maintaining native cartilage in the lab and culturing cartilage cells, or chondrocytes, to produce engineered cartilage. " The cells produce initially an immature matrix in engineered tissues, it is the maturation process that makes it tougher," one of the leading researchers said.

Take knee joints as an example. Knee joints are normally low in oxygen, so the researchers looked at the effect of depriving native or engineered cartilage of oxygen. In both cases, low oxygen led to more cross-linking and stronger material. They also found that an enzyme called lysyl oxidase, which is triggered by low oxygen levels, promoted cross-linking and made the material stronger.

This study can be ramified into the field of tissue grafts used in surgery, as well as new tissues fabricated using the principles of tissue engineering. Grafts such as cadaveric cartilage, tendons or ligaments are notorious for losing mechanical characteristics in storage. With the breakthrough of lab-grown tissue, they can now be treated to make them stronger and fully functional. Scientists also envisions that many tissue engineering methods will now be updated to take advantage of this strengthening technique.

This breakthrough is still in pipeline but Creative Biolabs, the leading biotechnological company, is considering exploring this project further with some pharmaceutical giants for its promising future. Creative Biolabs has extensive experience in various antibody production and engineering fields. Over the years, CB has always been committing to provide excellent custom serivce. With the increasingly fierece competition , cb is now expanding its service range seeking new opportunities and partnerships. With the skyrocketing development of technology and emerging bussiness in this field, we do believe the biotechnology industry will bring benefit to all human kind.
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