Osteoarthritis is one of the most common diseases in the world. It is an inflammatory and destructive lesion of articular cartilage, which often causes a significant decrease in the quality of life and disability of middle-aged and older people. Osteoarthritis of the knee joint is especially common. In 2019, 365 million people worldwide suffered from this disease.
In the treatment of diseases of the musculoskeletal system, in the last decade, mesenchymal stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta have been increasingly used in various countries. We have repeatedly reported on a clinical study by the Institute of Cell Therapy for the treatment of osteoarthritis. The effectiveness of cell therapy for gonarthrosis (knee osteoarthritis) was confirmed by the prominent Ukrainian football player Andriy Shevchenko (https://cryobank.ua/uk/articles-uk/stovburovi-klitini-platsenti-v-likuvanni-travm-i-zahvoryuvan-suglobiv/).
In 2025, it was reported that the Medipost company in South Korea also created a drug for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis using allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells isolated from umbilical cord blood. The drug was approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of South Korea for the treatment of degenerative changes in the knee joint caused by repeated injuries.
The method of cell therapy for gonarthrosis by scientists from South Korea involves intra-articular administration of mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord blood at a dose of 2.5 x 106 cells/500 μl/cm2. The manufacturer of the umbilical cord blood mesenchymal stem cell preparation in South Korea noted its high effectiveness in patients with acute osteoarthritis of the knee joint.
In 2022, colleagues from South Korea published the results of a 5-year follow-up of patients who received intra-articular umbilical cord blood stem cells for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. The authors received an award from the American Orthopaedic Society of Sports Medicine Journal for the best research project. It is also known that during 2023, sales of the umbilical cord blood stem cell preparation for the treatment of gonarthrosis in South Korea increased by 36%.
In 2025 a team of scientists from the Institute of Cell Therapy (Kyiv, Ukraine) also published the results of a non-randomized open clinical trial (phase 1) to study the safety and efficacy of intra-articular injections of placental stem cells in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis in the international scientific journal BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. This is a joint project of the Institute of Cell Therapy, Kyiv City Clinical Hospital No. 6 and the State Institution “Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine”. The study, conducted in Ukraine, included 26 patients with knee osteoarthritis (stage II-III). Ukrainian scientists have shown that intra-articular injections of placental mesenchymal stem cells and hyaluronic acid are effective in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis and are well tolerated by patients.
Source: https://parentsguidecordblood.org/en/news/cartistem-cord-blood-derived-therapy-knee-arthritis and https://bmcmusculoskeletdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12891-025-08664-2#citeas
