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LIAM McHUGH: She is known around the world as the speed
queen. Clocked at speeds over 70 miles per hour, Lindsey Vonn
became the first American woman to win downhill gold -
LINDSEY VONN: (Screams) Yes!
McHUGH: -- at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
VONN: Yeah! Yes!
McHUGH: But while on course to defend her title at the 2014
Olympic Winter Games, Vonn crashed and severely injured her
right knee at the 2013 Alpine World Championships in Austria.
VONN: The second I was tumbling down the mountain I was like,
"Oh man, I hope I'm ready for Sochi."
McHUGH: Vonn fractured her tibial plateau, the top surface
of her shin bone. She also tore two key ligaments in her knee --
the MCL, or medial collateral ligament, and ACL, the anterior
cruciate ligament. Off of snow for seven months following ACL
reconstruction surgery, Vonn is looking to Sochi as the ultimate
goal in her recovery process.
VONN: Once I found out that, you know, my knee was gone, that was
my only thought and my only priority. Next year and this
summer, for that matter, my focus is only on the Olympics.
McHUGH: While Vonn's accident is devastating, an ACL injury is
one the most common in skiing.
CATO LAURENCIN: The risk of ACL injury for athletes and
non-athletes is actually very, very high and some upwards of
one 1 in 7, 1 in 8 individuals can have an ACL tear in skiing.
McHUGH: Cato Laurencin is a professor of orthopedic surgery
and a biomedical engineer at the University of Connecticut Health
Center. He specializes in knee and shoulder reconstruction.
LAURENCIN: The anterior cruciate ligament is anterior, meaning
it's in front. It's cruciate, meaning it's in the form of a
cross with another ligament. And it's a ligament, and the
ligament connects bone to bone.
McHUGH: The ACL connects the femur, or thigh bone, to the
tibia, or shin bone and provides stability to the knee. Because
the ACL can't heal on its own, it must be surgically
reconstructed with biological tissue from the patient's own
body or from a cadaver. Full rehabilitation can be six months
to a year or more.
LAURENCIN: Athletes who are high performance want to come back as
quickly as possible.
McHUGH: With funding from the National Science Foundation,
Laurencin is developing an alternative solution that could
reduce recovery time. It uses a biodegradable scaffold called
the L-C Ligament that allows patients to regenerate a new
ACL. The L-C Ligament was made using tissue engineering,
a field of research that aims to repair and regenerate
biological tissues such as ligaments, tendons, and bone
using synthetic and natural materials.
LAURENCIN: By understanding how cells interact with materials,
we can create three-dimensional matrices that when planted -
implanted into humans, can regenerate the ACL. The goal is
not just to be able to create a material that is like the ACL,
the goal is to create a material that becomes the ACL.
McHUGH: Laurencin calls this field of work regenerative
engineering, the next level of tissue engineering combining
advanced materials science, stem cell science, and developmental
biology to regenerate muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
One of his team's latest projects involves the
shoulder rotator cuff.
LAURENCIN: We've now made pretty much every type of tissue in the
extremity and then how do we sort of bring these interfaces
together to create real complex tissues. And this answer is,
as we've said in regenerative engineering, the answer is a
complex answer. There's not going to be just the materials
part, but also the use of stem cells and understanding
developmental cues that will make things happen.
McHUGH: Students in his lab are also regenerating other
parts of the body such as bone and cartilage
degraded by osteoarthritis.
DEBORAH DORCEMUS: I'm working with a gradient scaffold that's
used to repair bone and cartilage. When you have
osteoarthritis, both the bone and the cartilage degrade and
we're trying to figure out a way to replace it as a total.
McHUGH: During a training run in November, Vonn experienced a
setback on her road to the 2014 Olympics, partially tearing her
reconstructed ACL. While human trials of Laurencin's L-C
ligament have just begun, he hopes it will one day help
athletes like Vonn get back on the slopes faster.
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