Department of Surgery, Divisions of Orthopaedic Surgery and Surgical Research, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Orthopaedic Tissue Engineering, 3-021 Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Research Innovation, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
FASEB J. 2020 Apr;34(4):5538-5551. doi: 10.1096/fj.201902559R. Epub 2020 Feb 24.
The presence of intact menisci is imperative for the proper function of the knee joint. Meniscus injuries are often treated by the surgical removal of the damaged tissue, which increases the likelihood of post-traumatic osteoarthritis. Tissue engineering holds great promise in producing viable engineered meniscal tissue for implantation using the patient's own cells; however, the cell source for producing the engineered tissue is unclear. Nasal chondrocytes (NC) possess many attractive features for engineering meniscus. However, in order to validate the use of NC for engineering meniscus fibrocartilage, a thorough comparison of NC and meniscus fibrochondrocytes (MFC) must be considered. Our study presents an analysis of the relative features of NC and MFC and their respective chondrogenic potential in a pellet culture model. We showed considerable differences in the cartilage tissue formed by the two different cell types. Our data showed that NC were more proliferative in culture, deposited more extracellular matrix, and showed higher expression of chondrogenic genes than MFC. Overall, our data suggest that NC produce superior cartilage tissue to MFC in a pellet culture model. In addition, NCs produce higher quality cartilage tissue at higher cell seeding densities during cell expansion.
半月板的完整存在对于膝关节的正常功能至关重要。半月板损伤通常通过手术切除受损组织来治疗，但这增加了创伤后骨关节炎的发生风险。组织工程在利用患者自身细胞生成可植入的有活力的工程半月板组织方面具有很大的潜力；然而，用于生成工程组织的细胞来源尚不清楚。鼻软骨细胞（NC）在工程半月板方面具有许多吸引人的特性。然而，为了验证 NC 用于工程半月板纤维软骨的用途，必须对 NC 和半月板纤维软骨细胞（MFC）进行彻底比较。我们的研究在微球培养模型中分析了 NC 和 MFC 的相对特征及其各自的软骨形成潜力。我们发现两种不同细胞类型形成的软骨组织存在很大差异。我们的数据表明，NC 在培养中具有更高的增殖能力，分泌更多的细胞外基质，并且表达更高水平的软骨形成基因。总体而言，我们的数据表明，在微球培养模型中，NC 比 MFC 产生更好的软骨组织。此外，在细胞扩增过程中，NC 在较高的细胞接种密度下产生更高质量的软骨组织。
