Platelet-rich plasma - A promising cell carrier for micro-invasive articular cartilage repair

Due to the limited regenerative capacity of cartilage tissues, articular cartilage defect caused by various lesions remains a problem to be resolved. Tissue engineering provided a valuable alternative to current therapeutic approaches, which is expected to greatly reduce the need of joint replacement. Scaffold, acting as cell carrier, plays an important role in maintaining cells in defect sites, thus facilitates the chondrogenesis. However, an open operation is often needed to implant the cell/scaffold composite, to find a less invasive way to delivering the complex into the defect site would be desirable. Different from synthetic and other nature derived scaffold, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a fraction of plasma which contains multiple growth factors and could be clotted when mixed with thrombin. Therefore, we hypothesized that PRP could be used as an autologous cell carrier to inject and fix chondrocytes into the defect site of articular cartilage. With the assistance of arthroscope, the defect could be precisely located, and injectable PRP-Cell composite would make the operation micro-invasive and simple.