We sought to determine the cartilage repair capacity of WIN-34B in the collagenase-induced osteoarthritis rabbit model and in progenitor cells from subchondral bone. The cartilage protective effect of WIN-34B was measured by clinical and histological scores, cartilage area, and proteoglycan and collagen contents in the collagenase-induced osteoarthritis rabbit model. The efficacy of chondrogeni...

Growth plate cartilage regulates the rate of growth and ultimate length of several bones in the skeleton. Chondrocytes within the growth plate proliferate, differentiate, enlarge, and die. The extracellular matrix undergoes synthesis, reorganization, and eventually degradation. The majority of research in growth plate physiology has focused on the proliferation and differentiation of chondrocyt...

Articular cartilage injuries caused by traumatic, mechanical and/or by progressive degeneration result in pain, swelling, subsequent loss of joint function and finally osteoarthritis. Due to the peculiar structure of the tissue (no blood supply), chondrocytes, the unique cellular phenotype in cartilage, receive their nutrition through diffusion from the synovial fluid and this limits their intr...

The presented study is focused on the generation of osteochondral implants for cartilage repair, which consist of bone substitutes covered with in vitro engineered cartilage. Re-differentiation of expanded porcine cells was performed in alginate gel followed by cartilage formation in high-density cell cultures. In this work, different combinations of growth factors for the stimulation of re-dif...

Devitalized hypertrophic cartilage matrix (DCM) is an attractive concept for an off-the-shelf bone graft substitute. Upon implantation, DCM can trigger the natural endochondral ossification process, but only when the hypertrophic cartilage matrix has been reconstituted correctly. In vivo hypertrophic differentiation has been reported for multiple cell types but up-scaling and in vivo devitaliza...

BACKGROUND Hyaline cartilage tissue of joints is susceptible to injuries due to avascularity. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are used for cartilage tissue engineering. Among MSCs, adipose stem cells (ASCs) are attractive because of accessibility, their large number, and rapid growth. Common in vitro protocols successfully induce chondrogenic differentiation by expression of multiple cartilage-sp...

The zebrafish pharyngeal cartilage is derived from the pharyngeal apparatus, a vertebrate-specific structure derived from all three germ layers. Developmental aberrations of the pharyngeal apparatus lead to birth defects such as Treacher-Collins and DiGeorge syndromes. While interactions between endoderm and neural crest (NC) are known to be important for cartilage formation, the full complemen...

Cartilage repair approaches may be improved by addition of human platelet-rich plasma (PRP) that increases chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem and progenitor cells. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of human PRP on the differentiation of multipotent human subchondral progenitor cells in resorbable polyglycolic acid-hyaluronan (PGA-HA) scaffolds. PGA-HA scaffolds were ...

The chondrogenic differentiation of synovial mesenchymal stem cells (SMSCs) is regulated by essential transcription factors and signaling cascades. However, the precise mechanisms involved in this process remain unclear. MicroRNAs (miRs/miRNAs) are undersized non‑coding RNAs responsible for the post‑transcriptional regulation of gene expression, by binding to the 3'‑untranslated regions (3'‑UTR...

Tissue-specific stem cells found in adult tissues can participate in the repair process following injury. However, adult tissues, such as articular cartilage and intervertebral disc, have low regeneration capacity, whereas fetal tissues, such as articular cartilage, show high regeneration ability. The presence of fetal stem cells in fetal cartilaginous tissues and their involvement in the regen...