Sanne Both is co-founder of Hy2Care®. She is also an unfortunate experience-expert regarding cartilage defects. Sanne’s story is exemplary for the reason that Hy2Care® exists – a motivation not just for herself, yet for our entire team!
At the age of 13-14 I started to have knee pain which increased over time. By the time I was 15, I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis dissecans (OCD). This is a joint condition in which bone underneath the cartilage of a joint dies due to lack of blood flow. This caused my cartilage to break loose, causing a lot of pain. So, I progressed towards my first surgical treatment: a Microfracture surgery.
This worked well for a few years, however, after 5 years the pain came back and a year later a new arthroscopy surgery showed that the Microfracture treatment had failed. This led to my second surgery, a Debridement, which involved removing pieces of cartilage that were no longer functioning properly.
Unfortunately, as expected the pain returned shortly and several months later, I was up for my third surgery – this time a Mosaicplasty. This procedure involves a mosaic-like transplantation of several small, cylindrical plugs of bone and cartilage, to ‘renew’ the surface of the knee. I was the 2nd patient in the Netherlands (in the afternoon, after the 1st one had been treated in the morning). I didn’t mind it being a new technique – I just wanted to get rid of my pain!
This new (then) innovative technique helped for some time, but the pain started to gradually come back after 10 years and now 20 years later the pain is steadily increasing. About 6 years ago I received help from a physiotherapist to walk in a different manner, thereby decreasing the pain a bit. But ultimately, I will need a prosthesis.
This experience has motivated me to make my life’s work solving this problem. Thus, I studied Medical Biology and worked in the field of bone and cartilage tissue engineering, in which I also obtained my PhD. In 2013 prof. Marcel Karperien from the University of Twente asked me to join his group to work on the hydrogel that can solve cartilage problems. Later, I joined Marcel in co-founding Hy2Care® and now we work together on a daily basis to develop the ultimate solution for cartilage repair!