Nanocarriers to deliver specific agents to promote cartilage repair

Current chondral lesion treatments, like implanting engineered cartilage, can face adverse biological events such as inflammation, bacterial infection, and extracellular matrix degradation. Inflammation can lead to the degradation of the engineered construct and may further progress to the degradation of the cartilage and propagation of acute inflammation in the knee joint. Bacterial infection derived from the surgical procedure itself is a serious risk that endangers the regenerative capabilities of the cartilage. Furthermore, at the early stages of articular cartilage injuries, degradation of the cartilage extracellular matrix can also occur.
RESTORE is creating tailored nanocarriers based on polymeric nanobiomaterials, specifically designed to sense and mitigate these illicit biological events – inflammation, infection and cartilage degradation – delivering specific therapeutic agents to the affected tissues.
RESTORE is also integrating these nanocarriers in 3D matrices to target mild and severe chondral lesions: (1) Bioprinted human cartilage microtissues (mild lesions) and (2) the COPLA® Scaffold (severe lesions).