Joints that have degenerated as a result of aging or injury contain dead chondrocytes and damaged cartilage. Some studies have suggested that chondrocyte death precedes cartilage damage, but how the loss of chondrocytes affects cartilage integrity is not clear. In this study, we examined whether chondrocyte death undermines cartilage integrity in aging and injury using a rapid 3D confocal carti...

We examined the effect of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) on proteoglycan synthesis by rabbit costal chondrocyte cultures maintained on plastic tissue culture dishes. Low density rabbit costal chondrocyte cultures grown in the absence of FGF gave rise at confluency to a heterogeneous cell population composed of fibroblastic cells and poorly differentiated chondrocytes. When similar cultures were...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease. In last years, research community has focused on understanding molecular mechanisms that led to pathogenesis of disease, trying identify different and clinical phenotypes along with discovery new therapeutic opportunities. Different types cell-to-cell communication have been proposed contribute OA progression, including mediated by connexin4...

The success of cell-based therapies to restore joint cartilage requires an optimal source of reparative progenitor cells and tight control of their differentiation into a permanent cartilage phenotype. Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) has been extensively shown to promote mesenchymal cell differentiation into chondrocytes in vitro and in vivo. Conversely, developmental studies have demonstr...

OBJECTIVE Decreased expression of collagen type II in favour of collagen type I or X is one hallmark of chondrocyte phenotype changes in osteoarthritic (OA) cartilage. MicroRNA- (miR-) 29b was previously shown to target collagens in several tissues. We studied whether it could contribute to collagen imbalance in chondrocytes with an impaired phenotype. METHODS After preliminary microarrays sc...

Cell-based therapy has been explored for articular cartilage regeneration. Autologous chondrocyte implantation is a promising cell-based technique for repairing articular cartilage defects. However, there are several issues such as chondrocyte de-differentiation. While numerous studies have been designed to overcome some of these issues, only a few have focused on the thermal environment that c...