Oscell

 Brian Ashton and Paul Harrison set up this laboratory with funds from the Institute of Orthopaedics at Oswestry (see www.orthopaedic-institute.org). Over three hundred patients with chondral defects have been treated and of these 82% have improved. This is excellent progress as all these patients have had previous surgery that has failed to help. This site will explain how cells from a patient are isolated and cultured so that after three weeks several million cells can be put back into the same patient to help heal chondral defects.

A similar technique is used for stem cells to heal fractures. This service is unique in the UK and indeed there are only six other centres I know of world-wide that have this ability.