ACI
Cell-based cartilage repair
A powerful idea built around harvesting, culturing and implanting a patient’s own chondrocytes.
The NanoACi story
Regeneration made simple.
“My work has been a progression: preserve more, disturb less, measure honestly.”Professor Paul Lee
The idea
The real innovation is not removing the surgeon. It is removing surgical trauma that no longer has to be there.
Professor Paul Lee trained as an orthopaedic surgeon and medical engineer. His cartilage work moved through established ACI and MACI, then toward single-stage repair. NanoACi asks whether the same biological ambition can be delivered through a smaller route, in one sitting, without arthroscopy.
That is why NanoACi is deliberately described as a surgical technique. The access has changed. The responsibility, planning and specialist judgement have not.
The progression
From implantation to injection.
MACI
Cells meet matrix
A scaffold helps organise implantation, while the treatment remains staged and operative.
STACi
One-stage surgery
The culture stage is removed and autologous cartilage repair moves into a single operation.
NanoACi
The operation becomes an injection
One-stage, non-arthroscopic and needle-delivered—while remaining a surgeon-led cartilage technique.
The legacy
A name can start a movement. Evidence is what makes it last.
The ambition is larger than one clinic or one hundred cases: make advanced biological joint preservation simpler, teachable and globally accessible.
Recognition should follow the work—patients helped, outcomes published, clinicians trained and a protocol that improves through scrutiny. That is how NanoACi becomes more than a brand. It becomes Professor Lee’s contribution to cartilage care.