Cartilage defect is a challenging problem for orthopedic surgeon. Once the cartilage had been destroyed it can not be repaired without intervention. Traditionally microfracture and Mosaicplasty had been used for the treatment. In the last two decades, cultured chondrocytes had been developed for treatment of cartilage defect. First human report for ACI was published in 1994. Later more and more research had been performed including mesenchymal stem cells (MSC).
Taiwan’s orthopedic surgeons also gave lots of efforts in regenerative research of cartilage defect treatments. In this lecture, we will briefly introduce our efforts of development of tissue engineered cartilage from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, and the translation medicine study to clinical trial.
Because Taiwan’s government has proved Specific Medical Management Regulation (SMMR) in 2018, now Taiwan has stepped into the era of regeneration medicine and cell therapy, we believe there will be more and more application in the field of orthopedic regeneration medicine.
We had also performed the first clinical trial using infra-patellar fat pad derived MSC for knee osteoarthritis (OA) treatment in the world, and had successfully get government’s approval under SMMR. Here we will also briefly present current results.

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