On October 4, Prof. Ren Li, Deputy of National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, School of Materials Science and Engineering, published a paper entitled Biomimetic cartilage-lubricating polymers regenerate cartilage in rats with early osteoarthritis online in Nature Biomedical Engineering with SCUT as the first affiliation.
The paper proposed a method to simulate the brush-like lubricating complex nanofibers within articular cartilage, which is expected to provide a new strategy for the treatment of early osteoarthritis. This is a breakthrough in the field.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common degenerative joint disease, caused by cartilage degeneration, injury, obesity, etc. It is the leading cause of disability in adults.
Based on the mechanism that the excellent lubrication performance of natural articular cartilage requires the coordination of synovial biomolecules to form a lubrication layer on the outer surface of cartilage, Professor Ren Li's team constructed two brush-like lubrication complex nanofibers, named HA/PA and HA/PM, which showed excellent lubrication performances and biocompatibilities.
It has been found that these two nanofibers can form a lubrication layer on the outer surface of cartilage and then effectively lubricate the damaged human cartilage, reducing its friction coefficients to the typical low level of natural cartilage. Results show that when HA/PA and HA/PM used together, the lubrication effects on human cartilage were the best.
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