You would think if we could get something as advanced as brain tissue to grow, then we could also get something as simple as hyaline cartilage to regenerate. I’ve been following the research on it for 14 years now since I had a knee injury from running that caused focal cartilage defects, and the rate of progress in the field is absolutely glacial.

The latest research articles in the medical journals are still talking about BMP-2 growth factors and mesenchymal stem cells being the future of cartilage repair, but I now treat this a bit like nuclear fusion in the sense that we always seem to be about 10-20 years away from productionizing it.

From the article:

> The tissue still has enough structure to hold together, but it is soft enough to allow the neurons to grow into each other and start talking to each other,” Zhang said. “Our tissue stays relatively thin, and this makes it easy for the neurons to get enough oxygen and enough nutrients from the growth media.

Seems like this would be great for hyaline cartilage as well, as the tissue is avascular and receives nutrients primarily via diffusion. I don’t have a background in the field, but it would be nice if we could take some of these cutting-edge techniques and attempt to apply them to more mundane things like joint degeneration.