The temporomandibular joint (TMJ), which forms the back portion of the lower jaw and connects your jaw to your skull, is an anatomically complex and highly loaded structure consisting of cartilage and bone. About 10 million people in the United States alone suffer from TMJ dysfunction due to birth defects, trauma, or disease. Current treatments range from steroid injections that provide only a temporary pain relief, to surgical reconstructions using either prosthetic devices or donor tissue, and often fail to provide long-lasting repair. Researchers have sought a better way to treat TMJ, including investigating biological TMJ grafts grown in the lab that could integrate with the native tissues, remodel the joint over time, and provide life-long function for the patient.
A multidisciplinary team from Columbia Engineering, Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine and Department of Medicine, Louisiana State University, LaCell LLC, and Obatala Sciences has now bioengineered living cartilage-bone TMJ grafts, precisely matched to the recipient, both biologically and anatomically. Their most recent study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, builds upon a long series of their previous developments that began in 2005 on bioengineering functional cartilage and bone for regenerative medicine and tissue models of disease… Continue reading.