Medipost's Cartistem shows effects on patellar cartilage defect patients

Medipost's knee osteoarthritis treatment Cartistem has been mentioned in a renowned international journal, showing that it is effective even in patients with cartilage defects, not only for those with degenerative conditions.

The S.Korean biotech company Medipost said on Tuesday that the results of a two-year follow-up study after performing Cartistem treatment on patellar cartilage defect patients were published in the World Journal of Clinical Cases, an SCI-indexed journal. Cartistem is an osteoarthritis treatment made based on stem cells extracted from a person's umbilical cord blood.

The knee joint is divided into several parts including the upper bone (the femur), the lower bone (the tibia), and the patella, also known as the "plate bone." Common degenerative knee osteoarthritis is a disease that causes problems in the femur and tibia.

The patella is thick and has a large area, so it is not easy to regenerate when it ruptures. It is treated by transplanting autologous chondrocytes or osteochondral, but it takes a lot of time and is expensive.

In the study, Cartistem was treated on a 15-year-old boy with deficient patella cartilage, followed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for two years, and it was found that there was indeed the cartilage regeneration effect.

"The cartilage regeneration effect lasted for a long time," said Song Joon-seop, director of Gangnam JS Hospital, who led the study.

"Cartistem has proven to be the best treatment for not only degenerative osteoarthritis patients but also for knee joint patients in the younger age group," said a Medipost official.

Write to Jae-Young Han at jyhan@hankyung.com