RESEARCH Open Access Temporomandibular joint regeneration: proposal of a novel treatment for condylar resorption after orthognathic surgery using transplantation of autologous nasal septum chondrocytes, and the first human case report Ricardo de Souza Tesch 1* , Esther Rieko Takamori 1 , Karla Menezes 1 , Rosana Bizon Vieira Carias 1 , Cláudio Leonardo Milione Dutra 1 , Marcelo de Freitas Aguiar 2 , Tânia Salgado de Sousa Torraca 3 , Alexandra Cristina Senegaglia 4 , Cármen Lúcia Kuniyoshi Rebelatto 4 , Debora Regina Daga 4 , Paulo Roberto Slud Brofman 4 and Radovan Borojevic 1 Abstract Background: Upon orthognathic mandibular advancement surgery the adjacent soft tissues can displace the distal bone segment and increase the load on the temporomandibular joint causing loss of its integrity. Remodeling of the condyle and temporal fossa with destruction of condylar cartilage and subchondral bone leads to postsurgical condylar resorption, with arthralgia and functional limitations. Patients with severe lesions are refractory to conservative treatments, leading to more invasive therapies that range from simple arthrocentesis to open surgery and prosthesis. Although aggressive and with a high risk for the patient, surgical invasive treatments are not always efficient in managing the degenerative lesions. Methods: We propose a regenerative medicine approach using in-vitro expanded autologous cells from nasal septum applied to the first proof-of-concept patient. After the required quality controls, the cells were injected into each joint by arthrocentesis. Results were monitored by functional assays and image analysis using computed tomography. Results: The cell injection fully reverted the condylar resorption, leading to functional and structural regeneration after 6 months. Computed tomography images showed new cortical bone formation filling the former cavity space, and a partial recovery of condylar and temporal bones. The superposition of the condyle models showed the regeneration of the bone defect, reconstructing the condyle original form. (Continued on next page) * Correspondence: rdtesch@ig.com.br 1 Centro de Medicina Regenerativa, Faculdade de Medicina de Petrópolis – FASE, Avenida Barão do Rio Branco 1003, Centro, Petrópolis RJ 25680-120, Brazil Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. de Souza Tesch et al. Stem Cell Research & Therapy (2018) 9:94 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13287-018-0806-4