Institute of Sports Medicine, Beijing Key Laboratory of Sports Injuries, Peking University Third Hospital, 49 North Garden Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China; Department of Joint Surgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, 324 Jingwu Road, Jinan, Shandong Province 250021, People's Republic of China.
Institute of Sports Medicine, Beijing Key Laboratory of Sports Injuries, Peking University Third Hospital, 49 North Garden Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China.
Biomaterials. 2016 Nov;108:157-67. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2016.09.002. Epub 2016 Sep 6.
Cartilage tissue engineering is the hotspot of cartilage repair. The allogenic chondrocytes appear to be a promising source of seed cells in cartilage tissue engineering. In this study, we aimed to transplant allogenic chondrocytes with chitosan hydrogel (CS)-demineralized bone matrix (DBM) hybrid scaffold (CS/DBM) to repair rabbit cartilage injury with one-step operation. After the CS/DBM scaffold was successfully fabricated, it showed that the porous CS filled the large pores of DBM, which improved the distribution of seed cells in the CS/DBM scaffold. The allogenic chondrocytes at second passage were transplanted with different scaffolds to repair rabbit cartilage injury. Twenty-four weeks after surgery, the cartilage defect in the CS/DBM group was successfully filled as shown by MRI. Moreover, the histological score of CS/DBM group was significantly higher than that of the other groups. On the aspect of biomechanical property, the regenerated cartilage in the CS/DBM group were superior to those in the other groups as determined by nanoindentation. Meanwhile, no obvious inflammatory response was observed after the transplantation of allogenic chondrocytes at 24 weeks post-surgery. Furtherly, gene expression profile for cells within the repair tissue was compared with the allogenic chondrocytes before transplantation using Agilent microarray and RT-qPCR. The results showed that some genes beneficial to cartilage regeneration, such as BMP-7, HGF, and IGF-1, were upregulated one month after transplantation. Consequently, our study demonstrated that the transplantation of allogenic chondrocytes with CS/DBM scaffold successfully repaired rabbit cartilage injury with only one-step operation, thereby providing new insights into cartilage tissue engineering.
软骨组织工程是软骨修复的热点。同种异体软骨细胞似乎是软骨组织工程中种子细胞的有前途的来源。在这项研究中，我们旨在通过一步手术用壳聚糖水凝胶（CS）-脱矿骨基质（DBM）杂化支架（CS/DBM）移植同种异体软骨细胞来修复兔软骨损伤。成功制备 CS/DBM 支架后，发现多孔 CS 填充了 DBM 的大孔，从而改善了种子细胞在 CS/DBM 支架中的分布。第 2 代同种异体软骨细胞用不同的支架移植以修复兔软骨损伤。手术后 24 周，MRI 显示 CS/DBM 组的软骨缺损被成功填充。此外，CS/DBM 组的组织学评分明显高于其他组。在生物力学性能方面，通过纳米压痕法确定，CS/DBM 组再生的软骨优于其他组。同时，手术后 24 周移植同种异体软骨细胞后未观察到明显的炎症反应。进一步使用 Agilent 微阵列和 RT-qPCR 比较修复组织内细胞的基因表达谱与移植前的同种异体软骨细胞。结果表明，一些有利于软骨再生的基因，如 BMP-7、HGF 和 IGF-1，在移植后 1 个月上调。因此，我们的研究表明，CS/DBM 支架移植同种异体软骨细胞成功地通过一步手术修复了兔软骨损伤，从而为软骨组织工程提供了新的思路。
