Patellofemoral Osteoarthritis

The purpose of this investigator-initiated study is to assess the efficacy of treating patellofemoral osteoarthritis with an Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP), autologous nasal chondrocyte tissue engineered cartilage (N-TEC), in comparison with a standard therapy using platelet rich plasma injections. The engineered cartilage graft is obtained by culturing expanded autologous nasal chondrocytes within a collagen type I/III membrane.

This project aims to develop an \[18F\] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) / magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method to locate the painful inflammation in PFJ OA associated with joint loading. \[18F\] FDG PET/MRI is an emerging pain imaging approach with enhanced sensitivity to painful hypermetabolic inflammation through evaluation of intracellular glucose utilization rate via (\[18F\]FDG PET) and fine anatomy details (MRI). The investigative group has shown its promise in revealing previously unidentified or unspecified pain generators in various musculoskeletal pain conditions. The investigators have also demonstrated the feasibility of visualizing the structural changes between unloaded and loaded knee joints with MRI, which can be easily adopted in the current PET/MRI setting. The main challenge in the proposed \[18F\]FDG PET/MRI approach is to differentiate the normal uptake of FDG for metabolic changes by weight-bearing from abnormal changes indicating eventual pain aggravation by weight-bearing and knee-flexion. The investigators have garnered the following two aims to validate the proposed method by comparing unloaded and loaded knee imaging results between PFJ OA pain patients and asymptomatic, matched controls.

ENCANTO is a randomized, controlled, multi-center phase II clinical trial for the treatment of patellofemoral osteoarthritis (PFOA) with an Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP), nasal chondrocyte-based tissue engineered cartilage (N-TEC) implantation in comparison with current standard of care depending on the stage of osteoarthritis. The goal of this phase II trial is to evaluate the efficacy of N-TEC treatment in comparison to an active comparator Autologous Matrix Induced Chondrogenesis (AMIC) for early stage PFOA or patellofemoral arthroplasty (PFA) for late stage PFOA. The N-TEC engineered cartilage graft is obtained by culturing expanded autologous nasal chondrocytes within a collagen type I/III membrane.

The PELICAN study is a prospective, non randomized, dual arm, multi-center clinical study comparing clinical outcomes of subjects treated with the LIFT Implant System to subjects treated with Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy (TTO).

The aim of the study is to compare the 12-month clinical outcomes of patients with patellofemoral osteoarthritis undergoing infiltrative treatment with fresh PRP and HA