This is great news. I honestly thought this trial would be a...

This is great news. I honestly thought this trial would be a complete failure because of its design, but I'm very happy to be proven wrong.

To elaborate, I have done heaps of research on knee osteoarthritis and have had successful stem cell treatment on both knees for osteoarthritis, and this trial is different to most. IMO MSB took a risk with this trial design. The difference between this trial and the vast majority of the large body of other studies on knee osteoarthritis is that this trial focused on the prevention of arthritis / on going joint health following ACL repair versus other trials looking to improve current degeneation of the cartilage. To be able to prevent or slow degeneration from a single injection following an already well established and successful surgical procedure in otherwise healthy, young individuals (ie the likelihood of existing cartilage defects is quite small) is a great outcome. I had multiple injections in both knees with active cartilage inflammation - giving the stem cells something to respond to, plus multiple injections.

They have already established cartilage repair in sheep. A lot of other researchers with autologous stem cells have also started with sheep and upon success there have followed up with humans with similar success. So we already have high confidence that the large animal studies translate well to humans for cartilage repair. Now they have shown PREVENTION in humans following ACL surgery. I am very happy with this result. Even in the worst case scenario where an argument exists that the stem cells improved the ACL repair which led to better joint mechanics and hence less chance of development of osteoarthritis, this is still an excellent result. You could argue that an injection of stem cells should be considered with every ACL surgical procedure given the long term benefits over the lifetime of the patient.