Dr. Hye Sung Kim significantly improved a repair of osteochondral defects using a cartilage-mimicking scaffold

Dr. Hye Sung Kim at ITREN significantly improved a repair of osteochondral defects using a cartilage-mimicking scaffold. A research article entitled “Protein-reactive nanofibrils decorated with cartilage-derived decellularized extracellular matrix for osteochondral defects” has been published in Biomaterials (IF 10.273)

(see the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961220304609).

 In collaboration with Prof. Kam W. Leong at Columbia University (USA) and Prof. Hyuk Sang Yoo at Kangwon National University (South Korea), she has developed a cartilage-mimicking scaffold based on an electrospun nanofiber-based 3-D scaffolds, named “nanofibril”. Cartilage is an avascular tissue and thus it barely regenerates once is damaged. So far stem cell therapy is the best hope but the clinical application is limited due to the poor cell survival in the body. To overcome this issue, her team provided stem cells a cartilage-specific microenvironment in 3-D using nanofibril. The surface of the scaffold was decorated with bovine cartilage-derived decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) which replicates compositional and structural features of the cartilage tissue. The significance of this study is that the amount of dECM chemically immobilized on the scaffolds is largely improved via a robust surface modification method called surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP). The cartilage-dECM decorated nanofibril not only improved the cell adhesion and proliferation, but also stimulated the chondrogenic differentiation of adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells, leading to an improved repair of osteochondral defects.

She said “I’m thrilled to report this exciting results in such an impactful journal in biomedical field. I could not do it without the collaborator’s help. I would really love to continue active collaboration with global institutes here at ITREN”

(See her interview with BRIC: https://www.ibric.org/myboard/read.php?Board=tr_interview&id=211527&qinterview=Y).