Damage to articular cartilage by acute or chronic injury causes pain and limits knee function. If left untreated, damage to the articular cartilage may further progress down a degenerative pathway, resulting in painful osteoarthritis. Physicians and scientists have been frustrated for decades by the inability of damaged articular cartilage to heal itself as it lacks both a blood supply and an appropriate population of repair cells.

Today’s techniques for treating chondral or osteochondral defects commonly include microfracture and transplantation procedures. Microfracture involves puncturing the subchondral bone to stimulate blood flow to the defect area. Transplantation techniques utilize the patients own tissue (autograft) or cadaveric tissue (allograft) to replace damaged tissue. These techniques typically provide a temporary relief by creating a fibrocartilaginous repair that is biomechanically and biochemically inferior to normal articular cartilage. Additionally, concerns remain about limited graft availability, morbidity at the autograft donor site, graft hypertrophy, the need for multiple surgical interventions, excessive cost or limited surgical locations. These current techniques, though beneficial in temporarily reducing patient pain, cannot truly be considered successful long-term solutions.

Kensey Nash Corporation is developing technologies to address the deficiencies found in today’s cartilage repair procedures. Significant preclinical research and development using our proprietary biomaterial technologies has yielded promising designs. Studies have been conducted with some of the premier academic institutes in the US. The success of these studies has prompted KNC to seek IDE approval with the United States Food and Drug Administration to begin a human clinical investigation.

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