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Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by xwdv on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @09:25PM (#29399960)
Exactly. Muscles and bones are nothing without good cartilage, and the fact is cartilage wears down over time and doesn’t get repaired, and I think this is one of the key reasons people feel “old”.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by ekianjo on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @10:18PM (#29400273)
Yeah. Osteoartritis is a condition that has virtually no good treatment.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by vervez on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @10:55PM (#29400488)
Bioengineer here able to chime in with niche expertise. Cartilage is and has been a holy grail in biomedical engineering but is very difficult to grow and transplant. There have been some successful neo-cartilage projects but integrating that into a defect and successfully integrating with host cartilage is the problem. The boundary of the defect actually has electronegative components that actively oppose integration of host and transplant (synthetic) cartilage. I think the most likely solution won't be a tissue-engineered transplant but rather an active cellular component that appropriately responds, and builds upon, this negative feedback cycle via cellular programming.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by xwdv on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @11:55PM (#29400828)
Could we harvest cartilage from other animals? Such as pigs perhaps.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by vervez on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @11:02AM (#29405096)
That's a strategy but there are issues with immune rejection since that's a xenograft. I think there are some products based off of this concept for other areas (skin grafts) after removing all xeno-cells from the tissue, but articular cartilage is more difficult to remove/replace xeno-cells with autologous or allogenic cells.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by scheme271 on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @01:12AM (#29401196)
I think cadavers are the typical source. Since there's no blood vessels in it, tissue rejection isn't as much of a concern.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by VirusNewbie on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @12:17AM (#29400947)
Growth hormone? It's just not without risks.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by Ovah on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @07:49AM (#29403177)
Cancer from soft tissues (sarcoma) has a high mortality rate. Even a very low risk of getting it from growth hormones would drastically limit their use. I believe there was a study showing a minute increase in risk of sarcoma in kids getting growth hormone injections. Which is why pediatric endocrilogists are lot more restrictive these days prescribing growth hormones than maybe 7 years ago. At least in my country.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by BadCookie on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @10:27PM (#29400326)
People lose muscle mass as they age as well. That is why the risk of falling (and not being able to get up) is high among the elderly.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by Teever on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @01:21AM (#29401240)
One of the major reasons that people lose muscle mass as they age is due to arthritis making it difficult to exercise. If there was a treatment for cartilage wear then elderly people could more easily stave off muscle loss by working out more.
Re:Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords by xwdv on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @11:54PM (#29400822)
Yes but this is mostly treatable by simply continuing to exercise and perhaps supplementing with creatine as you get older. There is no real way to prevent cartilage wearing down.