Currently, patients with external ear deformities rely on hyaline cartilage grafts or silicone prosthesis to provide them with adequate external ear reconstruction. Scaffold-free auricular tissue engineering provides a means of creating patient specific cartilage constructs solely using their own cells, ensuring biocompatibility, long term stability, and reduced morbidity. Here, we have develop...

In this work we have analyzed the presence of elastic components in the extracellular matrices of the developing chick leg bud. The distributions of elastin and fibrillin were studied immunohistochemically in whole-mount preparations using confocal laser microscopy. The association of these constituents of the elastic matrix with other components of the extracellular matrix was also studied, us...

Most components of the cholinergic system are detected in skeletogenic cell types in vitro, yet the function of this system in skeletogenesis remains unclear. Here, we analyzed endochondral ossification in mutant murine fetuses, in which genes of the rate-limiting cholinergic enzymes acetyl- (AChE), or butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), or both were deleted (called here A-B+, A+B-, A-B-, respectivel...

1. General Information All reactions were carried out in flame-dried glassware under an atmosphere of argon or nitrogen using anhydrous solvent. Dichloromethane was dried by passage through activated alumina columns. n-Propylamine was distilled from activated zinc dust and stored over sodium hydroxide. All other reagents were purchased from Acros, Aldrich, Alfa Aesar or Strem and used as receiv...