Professor Paul Lee

Professor Paul Lee is an award-winning Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and medical engineer with over 20 years of NHS experience. He specialises in cartilage repair, joint preservation, regenerative medicine, and hip, knee and ankle surgery.

His patients have included Premiership footballers, high-profile sportspeople and celebrities, including Olympic medallist Sharron Davies MBE, who has publicly shared her experience of Arthrosamid treatment. Whether the goal is returning to competition, enjoying a favourite sport or walking comfortably again, his focus is on the movement and activities that matter to each patient.

His work is driven by one question: “Can your joint still be saved before replacement?” He combines an engineer’s determination to solve problems with a doctor’s responsibility to assess evidence, explain uncertainty and recommend appropriate care. When familiar treatment pathways offer limited options, he investigates what else may be possible.

Professor Lee travels internationally to evaluate regenerative technologies and bring selected treatments into UK practice. His work includes navigating formal importation, supply and applicable MHRA medical-device registration requirements. This direct involvement gives patients access to distinctive treatment pathways, including techniques and combinations developed within his own practice.

He was the first surgeon in the UK to use Arthrosamid for knee osteoarthritis and has personally performed over 1,500 Arthrosamid treatments. He has developed and refined a dedicated injection protocol focused on precise delivery, consistent practice and minimising complications. He is the senior author of peer-reviewed research reporting two-year Arthrosamid outcomes from his own clinical cases, published in the Journal of Clinical Orthopaedics and Trauma.

His work bringing treatments into UK practice has continued with ChondroFiller and Mytocel MSK, followed more recently by Bioport TriCombo. Each has a different role, with treatment selected according to the patient’s condition and the evidence supporting its use.

His ChondroFiller practice includes personalised approaches using the German-developed collagen “gel” for focal cartilage damage and more extensive wear, including selected patients with joints described as “bone-on-bone”. These broader applications are assessed individually, with clear discussion of the emerging evidence, limitations and alternatives.

Professor Lee introduced Mytocel MSK cartilage micrograft treatment into UK practice and pioneered NanoACi, an approximately one-hour clinic procedure. NanoACi brings preparation of the patient’s own cartilage micrografts and treatment into a single session, avoiding the laboratory cell-expansion stage used in traditional cultured-cell cartilage procedures.

Meniscus repair with biological augmentation is another particular focus. His approach extends beyond individual PRP, BMAC or SVF injections, combining precise mechanical repair with tailored biological support and scaffold augmentation. He applies this tissue-specific approach to meniscus and ligament injuries, and selected shoulder and hip tendon problems.

His hip expertise includes SPAIRE hip replacement, which preserves key stabilising muscles and tendons around the joint. He has contributed to published work on this tendon-sparing technique and performs established hip and knee replacement surgery when appropriate.

His guiding framework is preserve, repair, regenerate and replace. Innovation is supported by careful patient selection, informed consent, rehabilitation and measured follow-up, with recommendations shaped by each patient’s diagnosis, activities and goals.

Professor Lee is founder and Medical Director of London Cartilage Clinic and MSK Doctors, and Honorary Professor of Sports Medicine at the University of Lincoln. He is also a Regional Surgical Adviser for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, clinical lead of an ICRS Teaching Centre of Excellence, and Founding President of I AM Regen, the International Association of Musculoskeletal Regeneration.

His academic contributions include over 100 peer-reviewed publications, chapters and abstracts. He is Editor-in-Chief of Musculoskeletal Regeneration Medicine and received the British Orthopaedic Association’s Robert Jones Medal and Association Prize in 2026.