The initial modeling and subsequent development of the skeleton is controlled by complex gene-environment interactions. Biomechanical forces may be one of the major epigenetic factors that determine the form and differentiation of skeletal tissues. In order to test the hypothesis that static compressive forces are transduced into molecular signals during early chondrogenesis, we have developed ...

OBJECTIVE The strong genetic association between HLA-B27 and ankylosing spondylitis has been known for over 40 years. HLA-B27 positivity is possibly associated with severity of ankylosis. We studied the in vitro and in vivo impact of HLA-B27 in models of chondrogenesis and osteogenesis. METHODS Different in vitro differentiation systems were used to mimic endochondral and direct bone formatio...

The development of treatments to restore damaged cartilage that can provide functional recovery with minimal risk revision surgery remains an unmet clinical need. Gene therapy shows increased promise as innovative solution for enhanced tissue repair. Combination biomaterial approaches led the gene-activated scaffolds capable a sustained delivery therapeutic genes in strictly controlled manner b...

Background We previously reported that ROR2 blockade (ROR2i) induces chondrogenesis in vitro and vivo , improving pain cartilage integrity following joint destabilization mice (Thorup et al. 2020). Downregulation of YAP signalling was required for induced by ROR2i, but per se not sufficient. Overexpression constitutively active negated ROR2i-induced chondrogenesis, the inhibitor Verteporfin una...

BACKGROUND Leptin plays an important role in mediating chondrogenesis of limb growth plate. Previous studies suggest that bone structures and development of spine and limb are different. The expression of Ob-Rb, the gene that encodes leptin receptors, is vertebral and appendicular region-specific, suggesting the regulation of leptin on VGP and TGP chondrogenesis may be very different. The aim o...

A critical event in limb cartilage differentiation is a transient cellular condensation process in which prechondrogenic mesenchymal cells become closely juxtaposed and interact with one another prior to initiating cartilage matrix deposition. Fibronectin (FN) has been suggested to be involved in regulating the onset of condensation and chondrogenesis by actively promoting prechondrogenic aggre...

Regarding the inadequate healing capability of cartilage tissue, cell-based therapy is making the future of cartilage repair and regeneration. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have shown great promise in cartilage regeneration. However, a yet-unresolved issue is the emergence of hypertrophic and pathologic markers during in vitro MSC chondrogenesis. Articular chondrocytes (AC) can suppress the unde...

In humans, loss of SHOX gene function is responsible for the mesomelic short stature characteristic of Turner syndrome, Leri-Weill dyschondrosteosis, and Langer dysplasia. In a mouse model of SHOX deficiency, Prrx1-Cre-driven limb-specific deletion of the paralogous gene Shox2 results in severe rhizomelia. In this study, we show that Col2a1-Cre-driven deletion of Shox2 in developing chondrocyte...

Stem cells derived from the infrapatellar fat pad (IPFP) are a potential source of stem cells for the repair of articular cartilage defects. Hypoxia has been shown to improve chondrogenesis in adult stem cells. In this study we investigated the effects of hypoxia on gene expression changes and chondrogenesis in stem cells from the IPFP removed from elderly patients with osteoarthritis at total ...

Effectively directing the chondrogenesis of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) to engineer articular cartilage represents an important challenge in ADSC-based articular cartilage tissue engineering. The discoidin domain receptor 1 (DDR1) has been shown to affect cartilage homeostasis; however, little is known about the roles of DDR1 in ADSC chondrogenesis. In this study, we used the three-dimen...