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Nearly 400,000 Americans tear their anterior cruciate ligaments (ACLs) each year. These tissues have minimal intrinsic ability to repair or regenerate in the human and thus injuries of these tissues are often treated by excision of the injured tissue and sometimes replacement with autograft or allograft tissue. Unfortunately, these procedures lead to a high rate of premature osteoarthritis of the knee (as high as 80 percent at 14 years after an ACL tear.
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Martha Murray, MD, physician in Sports Medicine, is developing ways to stimulate the healing of a patient’s own ACL, rather than replacing it. After most ligament tears, a blood clot forms, providing a temporary bridge that cells can crawl onto to begin the healing process. But in ACL injuries, fluid inside the knee joint dissolves the clot, so this bridge never forms. Dr. Murray and her team developed a mixture of collagen hydrogel and platelet-rich blood plasma that could facilitate ACL healing and developed surgical devices for this procedure.
Her technologies are currently being tested in preclinical animal trials and are showing promising results.
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