Critical clues on cartilage
Cartilage studies shed light on microdomains and pave way to better treatment options. Injury and degeneration of fibro-cartilaginous tissues, such as the knee meniscus and the intervertebral disc, have significant socioeconomic and quality-of-life costs. But the development of effective treatment strategies to address pathologies in these load-bearing tissues has been hindered by a lack of understanding of the relationships between their structure and their function.
Now, a team of researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania has shed new light on this issue, laying the foundation for better treatment of injuries such as meniscus tears as well as new therapies for osteoarthritis and age-related degeneration.
Their findings are reported in a paper, Microstructural Heterogeneity Directs Micromechanics and Mechanobiology in Native and Engineered Fibrocartilage, published online in Nature Materials on Jan. 4.
Dawn Elliott, professor and chair of UDs Department of Biomedical Engineering, explains that fibro-cartilaginous tissues are primarily made up of long, aligned fibers that confer strength and stiffness. It turns out, however, that they also have small non-fibrous regions, known as microdomains, that behave very differently from the fibrous areas.
Our first question when we saw these microdomains was Are they normal, or are they associated with pathology? Elliott says.
Studies done in her lab on bovine and donated human tissue showed that the microdomains were present beginning in the fetal stage but grew larger with age, injury, and disease, suggesting that increased microdomain size was related to loss of function.
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