World's First Biodegradable Joint Implant Grows New Joints

As I understand it the problem is in the other stuff [wikipedia.org] that surround the cells (disclaimer: I only did one very short course on tissue engineering).

Basically it's a chicken and egg problem: the stem cells need a good structure to grow in but the structure needs to be created by the cells. A solution is to create an implant which allows the cells to grow within it and then gracefully degrades as it is replaced by the natural bone/collagen etc. which seems to be what these guys have done.

It's a difficult (materials science) problem because there are a lot of requirements. For example it needs to be as tough as bone but break down after a reasonable amount of time. It needs to be non-toxic (before and after breaking down). It of course needs to be cheap(ish) and reasonably easy to mass produce. Anyway there's much more information here [wikipedia.org].

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/D_TzJpcR3Sc/worlds-first-biodegradable-joint-implant-grows-new-joints

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