Towards an artificial meniscus: biomechanical properties as a driver for orthopaedic innovation

Meniscal tear is still an unsolved problem in regenerative medicine. The almost total inability in self-healing damaged tissue shown by the menisci is due to the extremely reduced amount of vessels for blood supply that does not allow the normal inflammatory response promoter of tissue healing. The use of cadaveric meniscal allografts is subject to several inconveniences as penury of donor tissue, risk of infections and size matching. The challenge is therefore oriented towards the artificial meniscus prostheses. The use of composites based polymeric materials could partially replicate the complex internal structure determined by differently oriented layers operating in a fluid environment. In order to obtain a mechanically efficient prostheses it is indeed fundamental to deeply study the mechanical characteristics of the natural meniscus tissue preserving the features and behaviour of the original structure. A different, non destructive, method able to measure the effective mechanical response of a natural meniscus in its different regions without affecting the results by the sampling inconvenience was set up and described in this work. This technique let to combine a sequent set of classical destructive tests on the same menisci samples, providing an innovative database of mechanical data able to support the projecting phase of a new artificial meniscus.