Cover story:
Scanning probe devices will aid surgeons to diagnose diseases and repair the human body
Martin Stolza, Raphael Imerb, Urs Stauferb,
Niklaus F. Friederichc, and Ueli Aebi,a,*
a M.E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology, Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland
b Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
c Department of Orthopedic Surgery & Traumatology, Kantonsspital, Bruderholz/Basel, Switzerland
* Corresponding author: Ueli Aebi
Phone: +41 61 267 2260
Fax: +41 61 267 2109
E-mail
**
Fig. 1
Surface topography of (A) normal articular cartilage, (B) osteoarthritic articular cartilage. (A) The
67-nm axial repeat distance of individual collagen fibers was clearly resolved by AFM. (B) In contrast to
the normal cartilage that exhibited a random orientation of the collagen fiber network, in the diseased
cartilage the collagen fibers coalesced on top of each other and exhibited a preferred orientation.
Martin Stolza, Raphael Imerb, Urs Stauferb,
Niklaus F. Friederichc, and Ueli Aebi,a,*
a M.E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology, Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland
b Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
c Department of Orthopedic Surgery & Traumatology, Kantonsspital, Bruderholz/Basel, Switzerland
* Corresponding author: Ueli Aebi
Phone: +41 61 267 2260
Fax: +41 61 267 2109
E-mail
**
Fig. 1
Surface topography of (A) normal articular cartilage, (B) osteoarthritic articular cartilage. (A) The
67-nm axial repeat distance of individual collagen fibers was clearly resolved by AFM. (B) In contrast to
the normal cartilage that exhibited a random orientation of the collagen fiber network, in the diseased
cartilage the collagen fibers coalesced on top of each other and exhibited a preferred orientation.
Content
- Rheumatic diseases - the burden of aging
During the past century the average life expectancy has increased by nearly 20 years. While this definitely represents an unprecedented achievement, this gain is still on the expense of numerous diseases that are becoming more prominent in the elderly. In particular, osteoarthritis ...
- Nanomedicine: the dawn of a new era
It was right at the start of the new millennium that a scientific congress organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) took place in Geneva on “The Burden of Musculoskeletal Conditions” ...
- The Bone and Joint Decade
THE BONE AND JOINT DECADE is an independent global non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the health-related quality of life for people affected by musculoskeletal disorders worldwide ...
- New vistas to treat damaged cartilage
The idea of using nanotools for detecting diseases and repairing the human body was put forward in the late fifties by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman during his famous speech “There's plenty of room at the bottom”. However, it took another twenty years ...
- From the bench to the patient
The Swiss National Science Foundation is funding a National Center of Competence in Research Nanoscale Science that started in 2001. The project module “Nanotechnology in Medicine” aims to bring nanotechnology from the bench to the patient by developing a new class of diagnostic and therapeutic tools ...
- Early detection of cartilage diseases
In further experiments, we were able to mimic osteoarthritic disease progression by enzymatic digestion of the GAGs with cathepsin D ...
- Development of an arthroscopic AFM
As illustrated in Fig. 3, for performing IT AFM within the knee joint the scan head of the AFM is inserted under arthroscopic control into the knee and stabilized by two sets of liquid-inflatable balloons (Fig. 3, inset), similar to those used for heart angioplasty ...
- Added value
First, conventional indentation testing devices perform mechanical testing at the mm to cm scale, so they cannot assess tissue properties at the cellular to molecular level, i.e. at the scale were the biological metabolism occurs and also where most diseases start ...
- References
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