Tissue engineering detection

Tissue engineering: Detection After implanting the new engineered tissue into the affected region, you have to inspect if the engineering was successful and the work of the tissue is progressing. Therefore you have to take a small sample, which gets histologically observed under a microscopic device.

An example for this can be found by taking a look into the field of orthopaedic surgery.

In some cases of osteoarthrosis or massive cartilage damage (for example gonarthrosis) the transplantation of body´s own, autogenetic chondrocytes can prevent further articular wear and induces the healing of the damaged cartilage.

Therefore the physician takes a sample of healthy cartilage during an arthroscopic treatment, which then gets cultured under controlled laboratory conditions. The cells get distracted of their matrix, which provides the opportunity for the free chondrocytes of natural cell division in vitro.

After this process the new (engineered) cells are implanted during another arthroscopy which can be divided into two different methods:

-ACT (autogenetic chondrocyte transplantation)

-ACT 3D

During the ACT treatment a body own piece of periosteum or an artificial membrane is used to envelope or cover the damaged cartilage and gets sewed (water-proof) to the surrounding area. After that the suspension of cultured cells gets injected into this periosteal rag, where the chondrocytes in the solution begin to develop hyaline cartilage after a certain amount of time. The actual damage will absorbed by the new cartilage.

The part following this procedure, is the detection of the actual success of the treatment. As described previously, another sample of the treated area is taken after several weeks and checked in a histological establishment. Under the microscope, form, quality and composition of the specimen gets detected. It sometimes may occur that the new cartilage became a fibrous structure instead of hyaline cartilage, which means huge differences for the whole locomotor system. Another way to detect the results can be done by pressure tests, which expose the mechanical stability and assimilation/ excretion of fluids (does the tissue swell?). Those checks are also assisted by MRI or X-ray.

Detection is necessary to guarantee the definite success of the tissue-engineered treatment.

Sources: -http://www.bvmed.de/de/technologien/bewegungsapparat/knorpelersatz-act-tissue- engineering -http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autologe_Chondrozyten-Transplantation -http://gelenk-klinik.de/orthopaedische-erkrankung/kniegelenk/kniearthrose.html -Dr. med. Matthias Schmitz -Own working experiences