Fabrication of Tissue-Engineered Cartilage Grafts With Anatomic Surface Contours for Repair of Large Focal Defects Available to Purchase

Articular cartilage exhibits a poor healing response to injury that necessitates surgical intervention to repair or replace damaged tissue. Treatment options, however, are dependent on the location and size of the defect site. For small focal defects (<2 cm ²), microfracture is the primary method of treatment [8] despite the production of biologically inferior cartilage. For lesions greater than 10 cm ² where the articular cartilage loss and morphology of the condyle is distorted, a fresh osteoarticular allograft is most likely to succeed [3], while posing a significant surgical challenge related to the technical demands in restoring congruency of the articular surface (i.e., attaining a flush fit of the graft with the surrounding host cartilage tissue). This requires matching of the donor joint size to provide grafts with similar anatomical surface contours. As there is insufficient supply of suitable cartilage grafts to meet the clinical demand, the development of tissue engineered osteochondral grafts would have significant clinical impact for treatment of cartilage lesions and eventually entire articular surfaces.