When you picture old age, do you see yourself with bones creaking with arthritis, painful and preventing you from enjoying physical activities? Do you see this as an inevitable part of aging? Osteoarthritis does, in fact, impact hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and those affected incur significant physical burdens. What if we could re-grow lost cartilage and have the springy joints of our youth back? A new study is bringing us a step closer to being able to do just that.

Cartilage is the tissue that covers the ends of bones in joints. It helps prevent friction between bones and acts as a shock absorber during regular physical activities. Both injuries and everyday wear and tear can cause the cartilage to break down. If the loss of cartilage is severe, the underlying bone begins to break down, which leads to osteoarthritis. Current cartilage repair strategies are moderately effective at reducing pain but require surgeries and often replace damaged tissue with biomechanically inferior fibrocartilage. 

An international team of researchers has just refined a stem cell-based procedure that produces long-lasting, high-quality cartilage (so far just in tests with pigs). They modified stem cells and implanted them into damaged knees, which led to integration of the implanted stem cells and repair of the damaged cartilage. After six months, the repaired tissue had all of the physical and molecular characteristics of undamaged cartilage. The tissue even got thicker and more compressible—qualities that help cartilage to cushion the joints. The study also found that the injected cells caused the pig’s own body to start making cartilage cells to further help in damage repair.

Additionally, in an important step toward translating this procedure into the clinic, the scientists developed a liquid in which the injectable cartilage cells can be frozen and later revived. This means that the therapeutic cells could be transported to clinics and stored for an extended period, which would be ideal, should future research show the technology is safe and effective in humans.

For me, getting arthritis is one of the scarier prospects of getting older. I am very excited about the possibility that we could eliminate this through advanced research. A lot of anti-aging research centers around stem cells, so I am watching and waiting for breakthroughs in a number of areas. We live in interesting times. I am hopeful that some of this research will pay off in my lifetime.