Infrapatellar fat pad-derived stem cells maintain their chondrogenic capacity in disease and can be used to engineer cartilaginous grafts of clinically relevant dimensions.

Early human evidence such as case series or small samples is exploring possible benefits.

• 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)

A therapy for regenerating large cartilaginous lesions within the articular surface of osteoarthritic joints remains elusive. While tissue engineering strategies such as matrix-assisted autologous chondrocyte implantation can be used in the repair of focal cartilage defects, extending such approaches to the treatment of osteoarthritis will require a number of scientific and technical challenges to be overcome. These include the identification of an abundant source of chondroprogenitor cells that maintain their chondrogenic capacity in disease, as well as the development of novel approaches to engineer scalable cartilaginous grafts that could be used to resurface large areas of damaged joints. In this study, it is first demonstrated that infrapatellar fat pad-derived stem cells (FPSCs) isolated from osteoarthritic (OA) donors possess a comparable chondrogenic capacity to FPSCs isolated from patients undergoing ligament reconstruction. In a further validation of their functionality, we also demonstrate that FPSCs from OA donors respond to the application of physiological levels of cyclic hydrostatic pressure by increasing aggrecan gene expression and the production of sulfated glycosaminoglycans. We next explored whether cartilaginous grafts could be engineered with diseased human FPSCs using a self-assembly or scaffold-free approach. After examining a range of culture conditions

Evidence level

Early human evidence such as case series or small samples is exploring possible benefits.

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