The Multiple Difficulties And Challenges Involved In The Idea Of Going With Chondrocyte And Cartilage Implants And Transplants

As a response to the previous post I did about a member from the Make Me Taller forums named Mordred on a post HERE who talked about the idea of implanting chondrocytes into the closed growth plate area, I wanted to list the issues and challenges and problems which I can see at this point with this overall method.

Coming with an idea like implanting chondrocytes, progenitor cells like mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), or completely in vitro epiphyseal cartilage plates into the original closed epiphyseal regions is easy and it makes sense.

However the hard part will always be…

  • Actually regrowing the epiphyseal hyaline cartilage plates and get the extracellular matrix of the cartilage to be the right compositions, with the collagen type II, the preoteoglycans, growth factors, cytokines, the gylcoaminoglycans, and the sulphated alkalines to be as close to what is found in vivo as possible.
  • You still have to cause some form of initial distraction or fracture or break in the bone so you can embedded the cartilage or chondrocyte material. The type of initial break would have to be uniform in a specific shape so that the shape of the completely regrown plate can slip in the distraction. The fact that the ilizarov method with its easy hammer and chisel quick fracture may seem it would be faster to go with the old idea. Even then, the process will be surgical where the outer muscle and skin tissue may have to be cut open to implant the cartilage.
  • You would have to check the immunological issues with this approach because of the fact that human bodies which detect foreign objects will try to attack it with its white blood cells and other resistance and defensive biological. This would cause the completely functioning body to REJECT the implant. Remember from talks with medical professionals about how hard it is to find the right blood donor, or organ donor? It is because of the human body’s natural defensive system, in rejecting foreign bodies.
  • You must remember that the human body when it was young had at least two dozen growth plate cartilage areas, not just the knee region with the distal femoral area and the proximal tibial area. – If you want to get a proportional body, you would have to open or embedded the foreign in vitro grown cartilage into the humerus at least so that your arms are as long as your legs, in proportion. We must remember that in general, the wingspan of a human is about the same length as their height.
  • There were growth plate cartilage in the hip joint area, in each other vertebrate of the torso, in both ends of the knee, both ends, wrist, elbow, metatarsals, metacarpals, collarbone, etc. – Would we spend possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars also embedding more cartilage into our body to get the entire body to be proportional?

Conclusion: What is clear is that the overal idea and method is reasonable and makes sense. There are just a few major challenges we would have to get around to make the idea reasonable and practical enough to get it working for the average person who hopes for an alternative to the limb lengthening solution.