Chondrocyte Sheet

• Knee osteoarthritis is a slowly progressive, intractable degeneration of articular cartilage for which no definitive care has been established.
  As the number of patients is expected to increase due to the aging of society, knee osteoarthritis is definitely a pressing matter to be resolved in terms of the national healthy life expectancy, nursing care, and medical costs.

• 

Product Concept and Features

Knee osteoarthritis occurs due to aging, obesity, heredity or injury. The surface of the knee joint cartilage becomes worn and deformed. The patient has pain and finds it difficult to bend or straighten the knee. Patients suffering from this disease have been increasing and it is estimated that there are 25 million patients in Japan at present, 8 million of whom are estimated to have subjective symptoms, according to a survey by the 22nd Century Medical and Research Center at The University of Tokyo Hospital. Cartilage is known for poor self-repair capacity. For mild symptoms, conservative treatments such as physiotherapy or orthotics such as supporters and drug therapy using hyaluronic acid injection are used. For severe symptoms, surgical treatment is given. These treatments provide some positive effects, but do not solve the cause.
CellSeed has taken a different approach. We are using cell sheet engineering to tackle this disease. Through joint research with Tokai University, we have succeeded in producing a regenerated cartilage cell sheet from the patients’ own cartilage tissues, and are now exploring the development of chondrocyte sheets using tissues from polydactyly patients for allogeneic transplant. The cartilage cell sheet is harvested only by means of temperature alteration, without using enzymes. The cell sheet thus retains the adhesive proteins on the cell surface, allowing it to readily graft onto the intended area. The transplanted cartilage cell sheet is thought to protect the damaged areas and to secrete proteins needed for cartilage regeneration, thereby assisting with the cartilage’s own tissue repair mechanism.