New research by an interdisciplinary team in Lithuania has revealed a promising and unconventional approach to cartilage regeneration. Using extracellular vesicles derived from menstrual blood stromal cells, the researchers demonstrated their potential to stimulate cartilage repair—paving the way for a future cell-free therapy for osteoarthritis.
More than 600 million people worldwide live with osteoarthritis, with around 73% over age 55 and 60% being female. With aging populations, rising obesity, and more injuries, osteoarthritis’s prevalence will keep growing.
Today’s clinical treatments mainly manage symptoms such as pain and inflammation, but none can halt or reverse cartilage degeneration. Regenerative medicine, based on the principles of stem cell technology and tissue engineering to replace or regenerate human tissues and organs and restore their functions, is therefore gaining momentum. Among the strategies, menstrual blood-derived cells have emerged as a more promising tool than bone marrow cells.
“Collecting menstrual blood is non-invasive and simple, since it is a naturally shed biological material. In contrast, collecting bone marrow requires an invasive procedure,” says Dr. Ilona Uzielienė, a researcher at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Faculty of Chemical Technology.
“Furthermore, these cells actively secrete molecules that promote regeneration to regenerate the uterine lining every month. This makes them an attractive source for regenerative medicine, particularly when safety and accessibility are paramount.”
Therapy worked even on older cells with reduced regenerative capacity
A study by Lithuanian scientists in the fields of biomedicine and chemistry explored the potential of extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal stromal cells. The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
According to Dr. Uzielienė, EVs are tiny messenger-like particles released by cells that can enter other cells and influence their activity—for example, by promoting regeneration or reducing inflammation.
In the experiment, researchers used menstrual blood samples from three healthy donors, as well as post-surgical tissue samples from ten female donors with osteoarthritis. To observe how EVs affect human tissue, the scientists used biological scaffolds—structures that help stabilize EVs and support their interaction with cells.
“What surprised us most was that the therapy worked even in cartilage cells from older postmenopausal women, whose natural regenerative capacity is already greatly reduced. Despite this, extracellular vesicles from menstrual blood cells not only improved cartilage cell function and slowed tissue degradation but also increased progesterone receptor expression in the older cartilage cells, where only minimal traces would normally remain,” says Dr. Uzielienė.
According to her, the main innovation of this study is its proposal of a cell-free therapy—one that is based not on the cells themselves, but on their tiny particles, extracellular vesicles. They can activate regeneration without any side effects.
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https://phys.org/news/2026-04-menstrual-blood-derived-particles-osteoarthritis.html