Evaluation of Insulin Medium or Chondrogenic Medium on Proliferation and Chondrogenesis of ATDC5 Cells

BACKGROUND The ATDC5 cell line is regarded as an excellent cell model for chondrogenesis. In most studies with ATDC5 cells, insulin medium (IM) was used to induce chondrogenesis while chondrogenic medium (CM), which was usually applied in chondrogenesis of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), was rarely used for ATDC5 cells. This study was mainly designed to investigate the effect of IM, CM, and growth medium (GM) on chondrogenesis of ATDC5 cells. METHODS ATDC5 cells were, respectively, cultured in IM, CM, and GM for a certain time. Then the proliferation and the chondrogenesis progress of cells in these groups were analyzed. RESULTS Compared with CM and GM, IM promoted the proliferation of cells significantly. CM was effective for enhancement of cartilage specific markers, while IM induced the cells to express endochondral ossification related genes. Although GAG deposition per cell in CM group was significantly higher than that in IM and GM groups, the total GAG contents in IM group were the most. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated that CM focused on induction of chondrogenic differentiation while IM was in favor of promoting proliferation and expression of endochondral ossification related genes. Combinational use of these two media would be more beneficial to bone/cartilage repair.