Building a New Hip: Cartilage Grown on a Woven Polymer

Building a New Hip: Cartilage Grown on a Woven Polymer

Collections: Image Award Winners

2012 Award Winner

Benjamin L. Larson, Hyoungshin Park, Farshid Guilak, Jean F. Welter, Robert Langer and Lisa E. Freed

Koch Institute at MIT

Bright Field Light Micrograph

Damaged cartilage has very limited capacity for self-repair, and must often be treated with total knee or hip replacement surgery. Here, researchers grow cartilage from adult stem cells in the lab, creating a construct that could fuse naturally to bone to repair joint injury.

Video

Benjamin Larson explains how and why he captured his image of cartilage grown in the laboratory.