Resumen de Knackered knees? Nose cartilage can fix them
It turns out that nasal cartilage is a good substitute for the knee's natural shock-absorbing tissue--so much so that nine people have undergone the first nose-to-knee cartilage transplant. Ivan Martin, a tissue engineer at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, has come up with an alternative source of the fibrous tissue--with a little help from the nose. The cartilage not only settled comfortably into its new home, but also restored the knee joints to good health. It even started to look like knee tissue genetically. After bedding down, the cartilage cells began expressing the genes that one would expect to see in native knee cartilage.
