Derek Johnson didn't give much thought to the protective cartilage
that cushioned his bones until a small area in his left knee wore down to the point that it was
raw and painful. Following an evening on the basketball court, the 44-year-old woke up in the
morning and knew he was in trouble: "I could barely walk," he says.
After babying the joint and consulting with an orthopedic surgeon,
Johnson dialed back his physical activity for several years - no competitive basketball and more
"timid" tennis and football sessions, as he describes it. But the pain flared up again last summer.
Johnson returned to his surgeon at New York City's Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and learned
that his once tiny area of cartilage loss was expanding. Soon thereafter, the 49-year-old father
of two opted to try an experimental procedure - one that would use his own harvested cartilage cells
to grow a new protective layer of tissue.
With limited cartilage-regeneration options available, Johnson
believed this technique represented his best hope of one day resuming his sports passions. "I
wasn't prepared - or willing - to become victim to a constrained way of life." he says.
The procedure, in which harvested cells grow along a three-dimensional
scaffold-like collagen device called a NeoCart, is one of several cartilage-regeneration approaches
being explored by researchers in the United States and elsewhere who are striving to find a simple
and cost-effective solution for a common problem: limited but painful cartilage loss in the knee.
Contact for complete article.
