John Szivek was recently awarded over $1 million, but he didn't win it on a reality TV show.

The National Institutes of Health gave Szivek, an orthopedic surgery research professor, $1.1 million to grow human cartilage in his lab. The cartilage will more closely mimic the natural cartilage that surrounds the bone in the joints.

"It's the hottest thing in orthopedics right now," said Bill Grana head of the orthopedic surgery department.

Szivek is also working with the materials science and engineering department to develop a tiny alarm system, or "radio-transmitter," to insert into a patient's joint.

The alarm would go off to alert the person if a specific activity was too strenuous for the joint to handle and, through sensors, would monitor how well the joint is accepting the lab-grown cartilage.

Right now, people with damaged cartilage or people who have had arthritis for several years can experience serious pain and swelling, but their treatment options are minimal.

"Mosaic-plasty," a procedure in which cartilage from a damaged joint is removed and replaced with cartilage from a healthier joint is one option currently available to patients.

However, Szivek said that the operation does not work consistently.

Common joint replacement surgeries are also available, but they can be problematic and expensive, Szivek said.

During the process, a plastic material similar to the material of a milk jug, is inserted in place of the natural cartilage, and the cost can range anywhere from $2,500-$25,000, depending on the surgeon, he said.

The cells have difficulty "digesting" the plastic replacement and can become loose, Szivek said.

"If you put it into an athlete, they're not an athlete anymore," Szivek said. "That's the end of their athletic career."

Szivek's research, however, is a shift in the way damaged tissue in joints has been addressed, something that has not been done in the past, Grana said.

He hopes his research will eventually allow athletes to continue competing free of pain.

Cartilage provides shock absorption and smooth motion at the end of bones in joints. When the cartilage is damaged, the bones that makes up the joint scrape against each other and cause more damage.

Through Szivek's research, cells from a person's cartilage are placed on a "scaffold," or a porous structure that acts as a joint where cartilage and bones can be built, said Jay Hoying, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

The cells placed on the scaffold are stretched and twisted, giving them the same kind of work they would get in a joint.

"It's the best idea so far," Hoying said. "It's relatively easy to put cells on the surface of bone, but they don't always behave normally. So growing them in an environment like this should get those cells to act normal."

The cost for the procedure is about $35,000. Growing the cartilage currently costs $25,000 and the remainder of the cost goes toward the radio transmitter, Szivek said.

"Once we've got a production line, it will be much cheaper," he said.

Szivek expects his research to start being applied to patients in about five years.

The orthopedic surgery, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering departments and the Arizona Arthritis Center are now working together to grow the cartilage and improve the radio-transmitter.