An explant is a small piece of living tissue, such as cartilage, taken from the body and kept alive in a dish for experiments. It keeps cells in their natural matrix.
Also called cartilage explant, tissue explant.
Explants sit between single cells and a whole animal. Cells in an explant stay inside the matrix they built, so researchers can watch the matrix itself being broken down or protected.
Two studies on this site used cartilage explants. Blain and colleagues broke down cartilage explants over 28 days with IL-1 alpha and oncostatin M. A Boswellia frereana extract stopped the breakdown of the collagen matrix and lowered MMP13 mRNA (Blain 2010). Roy and colleagues showed that curcumin monoglucuronide protected explants from MMP-driven cartilage destruction, before testing it in rats (Roy 2025).
Explants show how a compound acts on real cartilage tissue at a set concentration in a dish. They don't show what a dose taken by mouth would do, because nothing has to be absorbed or reach the joint.
In animal and lab studies, yes. AKBA, the lead boswellic acid, suppressed MMP13 in rats with chemically induced knee damage, and a frankincense extract lowered MMP13...
In lab and animal studies, yes. Curcumin lowered MMP13 in rat cartilage cells exposed to IL-1 beta, and a curcumin metabolite bound and blocked MMP13 directly and...