A new way to treat worn knee cartilage; surgery optional | Juana Mendenhall | TEDxPeachtree

as a pretty popular high school athlete I always thought I would be fit fine and fabulous at the age of 40 having the exceptional balance between healthy eating and living with the perfect workout regimen however I got older so did my body and my time to workout gotten limited I noticed that my natural-born athleticism started to diminish and was noticeable it became extremely noticeable after playing an impromptu game of basketball in my mid-20s with some friends that game was the start of a downward spiral of knee injuries that resulted in for Denis surgeries all those knee surgeries led me to believe that this knee injury business is never-ending well the truth of the matter is happens and it happened to me at this moment I realize that no matter how healthy or athletic I am at some point in time via playing sports being active or just naturally aging my knees your knees our knees will begin to slowly deteriorate the unfortunate truth is that over time we all will be faced with some knee problems as we age according to the National Institutes of Health by the year 2030 nearly 65 millions of Americans will suffer from some knee problems affiliated with osteoarthritis commonly known as oay furthermore every year approximately 700,000 Americans undergo knee replacement surgeries chances are you or someone you know will have to deal with the chronic pain and inflammation affiliated with the knee injury or knee surgery and knee surgeries are about so much more than the actual surgeries themselves in my case I didn't realize the amount of pain and downtime affiliated with the recovery I also didn't realize the simple things we take for granted by hopping to the bathroom or asking someone to assist you with your hopping to the bathroom eventually my scientific curiosity led me to question what technologies if any were on the market given this curiosity I decided to ask my resident orthopedic surgeon if he would allow me to watch him perform a knee replacement surgery well as you can imagine my perception on how knee surgeries were perform changed drastically after viewing the surgery I realized two things one the human body is physically indispensable in to knee replacements are one size fits all and the current technology sure treats them like they are I noticed it didn't matter if you had a small medium or large knee it was simply about what is available and making it fit no matter what I began investigating the current technologies to see how they worked I learnt the first component in the technology is something called a synthetic scaffold that is used as a mold to help tissue grow a tissue scaffold is comparable to the metal building scaffold you see while walking in a busy downtown area the scaffold is there to hold the building up while new materials are added to help repair the building after all the components are added the scaffold is then removed and the building is complete scaffolds are used in tissue engineering as well and they consist of things such as hydrogels and three-dimensional fibres but instead of using metal and drywall like in building scaffolds we use cells and biological entities such as proteins and growth factors this process helps helps expedite tissue growth and formation resulting in newly formed tissue such as bone and cartilage see cartilage it doesn't regenerate itself once it's injured it is irreplaceable cartilage is a dense material that doesn't have blood vessels flowing through it making it a little more problematic to work with for knee injuries the current treatments include scaffolds such as injectable gels that are used to stabilize and support the knee these commercially available injectable gels are used to replace the naturally occurring lubricant found in the knee acting as a shock absorber to prevent bone-on-bone contact unfortunately these materials act as a band-aid after three to six months and another injection is needed because of this band-aid however during this time your cartilage is not being regenerated nor is any healing occurring contrary to knee injuries for knee replacement surgeries there's a shelf life of around 18 years but again still no healing occurs or cartilage is being regenerated to date there is nothing available to regenerate cartilage but what if there could be a product that would improve the current technology begin to regenerate your cartilage and start to heal your knee from the inside out before the damage escalates after all everyone wants to be healthy forever so what if I could what if I could even invent a preventative therapy to help those of us at the cusp of getting older this challenge intrigued me and forced me to make this my life's mission to solve this daunting task what my research lab développé is an innovative injectable gel that shows promise in providing a non-invasive way to regenerate knee cartilage more importantly this product will provide millions of Americans with relief an improvement of knee pain as they continue to age especially for those athletes runners and my adrenaline junkies so how does it how did I come up with this idea by simply taking a look from a different lens I was able to come up with a clever approach to help people with the knee injuries I wanted to blow the roof off that the traditional therapies but more importantly I wanted to break into this field but something different and unique on how we go about treating knee injuries one thing that stood out to me was how the current treatments for new therapies are performed and how they differ from cancer treatments sadly enough cancer is a disease that's constantly changing and evolving always masking itself causing researchers to always figure out a way to demolish cancer cancer treatments unlike knee treatments have started moving into a more personalized area where they can focus on one specific tumor and demolish it from the inside out providing a localized targeted therapy unfortunately the field of orthopaedics has not moved into the area of personalized knee or joint but prepare but what if we can start to take a look at each specific need effect and determining the severity of it is there a way to go about looking at each specific need of it defense and determine how long a patient has until their knee completely fails what my research lab has developed is an innovative way to solve this problem by creating a scaffold that is an injectable gel and contains the natural lubricant found in the knee in addition to adding therapeutic molecules these therapeutic molecules in conjunction with our gel provide a way that we can look at each specific need affect and treat it by controlling the cell health and viability ensuring that we can recreate those intricate structures in cartilage now I'm not talking about rocket science but biomedical engineering which is even cooler and it allows us to do things like 3d printing 3d printing has become a hot commodity that allows us to make anything we want using plastics but more recently we've started using selves and hydrogels to make new tissue using chemical design synthesis analysis and 3d bioprinting where we can 3d print cells inside of gels to make intricate structures that mirror cartilage but also placing these 3d printed gels and cells into a low oxygen or hypoxic chamber that simulate these knee issues or conditions and diseases of the knee so how does it work at the onset of a knee injury low oxygen levels occur in the knee this low oxygen environment doesn't allow the cells to create the molecules that are essential the mechanical stability decreases Wow the inflammation and pain probe the proteins affiliated with information and playing increase this low oxygen or hypoxic environment also cultivates toxic free radicals I've demonstrated in my research lab that we can increase the amounts of collagen glucosamine and DA DNA using our gels but to improve this technology we begun incorporating therapeutic molecules to provide a cell protective scaffold the mechanism for how our therapeutic molecules work are essentially by exploiting the chemical properties of the therapeutic molecules that allow us to capture those toxic free radicals the results show us that we increase the number of collagen glucosamine and DNA but ultimately we decrease the amounts of inflammatory proteins this cutting-edge therapeutic technology has allowed me to create a predictive analytic model that now can focus on one specific knee injury and begin incorporating yourselves that later will successfully regenerate my cartilage your cartilage our cartilage the future of knee repair is moving towards a personalized regenerative approach and I personally want to help Americans have a better quality of life with knee problems and osteoarthritis because wouldn't it be awesome if you could go into the doctor and discuss a personalized plan regarding improving your knee pain and eliminating you from having surgery thanks to this preventative technology a well balanced life and a new knee will help me you and others feel fit fine and fabulous at the age of 41 thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 98,963

Rating: 4.5724983 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Science (hard), Biotech, Chemistry, Innovation, Invention, Science, Surgery

Id: fdwz2lKJStU

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017