Cartilage Repair and Regeneration: Focus on Multi-Disciplinary Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

As widely demonstrated and known, adult articular cartilage exhibits a very poor self-healing capacity once injured. This is due to the complex multilayered morphological structure and an avascular, aneural, and hypocellular nature that characterize this tissue. A minimal damage or lesion may lead to cartilage tissue degeneration and osteoarthritis (OA) development, resulting in significant pain and disability.

Several approaches centered on cell-based therapies and cartilage engineering techniques have attempted to repair chondral or osteochondral defects that still remain a significant challenge in clinical practice. The failure in the use of these technics is often due to the improper mechanical properties of newly formed cartilage-like tissue, the early entrance of the lately differentiated chondrocytes in hypertrophic stage, characterized by a senescent-associated secretory-like phenotype, or the insufficient insertion into the host tissue, often characterized by the inflammatory, osteoarthritic milieu.

While several advances have been made in recent decades, the complexity and the multifactorial aspect of articular cartilage degeneration and a consequent, apparently unstoppable OA onset and progression suggest that a multidisciplinary approach will likely be optimal to address the challenge of preserving the articular cartilage in early stages and/or developing a functional cartilage replacements in advanced degenerative stages. This kind of approach is based on a combination of several disciplines, such as biomechanics and mechanobiology (bioreactors/moderate physical activity, etc.), innovative biomaterials functionalized with growth factors, exogenous enhancers and biomolecules exploiting pharmacological activities, cells from different sources (adult stem cells, chondrocytes, co-cultures), epigenetic modifications, functional foods, etc.

In the context of developing cartilage repair and regeneration strategies, this Special Issue’s Editor invites original contributions, review articles, communications, and concept papers that address these challenges. The suggested focus and the goal of a multidisciplinary strategy is to realize a clinically relevant tool for cartilage repair or regeneration that is more likely to be successful, obtained by controlling both the formation of a new suitable tissue replacements and the damaged joint tissues environment on the local and systemic level.

Dr. Marta Anna Szychlinska
Prof. Giuseppe Musumeci
Guest Editors

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