Engineering articular cartilage-like grafts by self-assembly of infrapatellar fat pad-derived stem cells.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Well documented limitations associated with primary chondrocytes for cartilage tissue engineering applications have led to increased interest in the use of multi-potent stem/progenitor cells. The objective of this study was to firstly investigate if infrapatellar fat pad-derived stem cells (FPSCs) could be used to engineer cartilage-like tissues through a self-assembly (SA) process, and secondly to compare the properties of such grafts to those engineered by agarose hydrogel encapsulation (AE). Self-assembled cartilaginous tissues were first engineered by geometrically confining FPSCs on tissue culture plastic, and then either continuously or transiently supplementing these constructs with transforming growth factor-b3 (TGF-b3). Transient supplementation with TGF-b3 (for the first 21 days of culture) enhanced the development of self-assembled grafts, with sGAG accumulation reaching levels of 8.4 ± 1.5% w/w after 6 weeks of culture. While overall levels of matrix synthesis were higher with AE compared to SA, when normalized to tissue wet weight, ECM accumulation was significantly greater in the lighter SA constructs. A potential drawback with the SA approach on tissue culture plastic was that it often led to the development of contracted,geometrically inconsistent tissues.We therefore next explored if SA on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) transwell membranes would lead to the d

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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