Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis, is a serious disease of the joints affecting nearly 10% of the population worldwide. The onset of OA has been associated with defects to articular cartilage that lines the bones of synovial joints. Current strategies to treat articular cartilage defects are ineffective and/or prohibitively expensive. The aim of ANCHOR was to develop and commercialise a new medicinal product for articular cartilage regeneration that recruits endogenous bone marrow derived stem cells into an extracellular matrix derived scaffold anchored to the subchondral bone by 3D printed polymeric supports. We developed a porous scaffold for cartilage regeneration using decellularised cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM), and used 3D printing to successfully produce a fixation system to anchor this scaffold into a damaged synovial joint. In a pre-clinical model we demonstrated the capacity of this implant to enhance joint regeneration compared to surgical approaches currently used in the clinic. The implant functions by recruiting endogenous cells into the supporting scaffold, thereby overcoming the need for pre-seeding scaffolds with cells prior to implantation into cartilage defects, thereby dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of the repair procedure. The future impact of ANCHOR is expected to be multi-faceted: it will provide orthopaedic surgeons with a new approach to treat cartilage defects, it will create economic value through the commercialization of IP, and most importantly it will improve patient experience and their long-term health and well-being.
