Cartilage protection and repair
Different connective tissues show different capacities to heal themselves. Unlike bone itself, the cartilage lining our bone ends in the joints does not have a blood supply and therefore lacks some of the natural reparative processes found elsewhere in the body, e.g. easy recruitment of biological factors and stem cells from the circulating blood to the damaged site.
Our research in the Centre tries to uncover the fine details of the ways in which cartilage tissue is made and maintained throughout life. By so doing we hope to be able to manipulate these pathways in order to induce the cartilage to make more repair tissue when needed – for example in the early stages of osteoarthritis or following injury.