Home › Blog › Is the Regenexx-SCP Procedure Chondrogenic?

We’ve been looking to create a platelet rich plasma (PRP) that’s more chondrogenic, which means cartilage producing, so in essence, a PRP cartilage treatment.  Since PRP contains many healing growth factors and some of these (like TGF-beta) are known to help cartilage repair, all PRP has some ability to help cartilage heal. The problem is that the whole soup of growth factors may have some working in that direction, while others work in different directions. In addition, recent research shows that bloody and white blood cell rich PRP may actually cause joint stem cells to produce chemicals that can breakdown cartilage. So as we go through this research project, we’re testing all of our platelet procedures to see which can help stem cells produce cartilage and how much. This is the florescent microscopy picture of stem cells producing cartilage components (Aggrecan and Collagen 2). So we know (at least in the lab) that the Regenexx-SCP procedure helps stem cells to produce cartilage. In addition, it also eliminates the harmful red and white blood cells from the sample rather than concentrating them like many automated bedside centrifuge machines commonly used by physicians to create PRP. The upshot? We commonly see good results in patients with mild joint arthritis when we use SCP (super concentrated platelets), so it’s good to see that on balance, the lab data supports what we see clinically!

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile