Purpose

Cell based therapy is constantly underway since regeneration of genuine hyaline cartilage is under par. Much attention has been afforded to chondroprogenitors recently, as an alternative cell substitute for cartilage repair. Although single source derivation of chondrocytes and chondroprogenitors is advantageous, lack of a characteristic differentiating marker obscures clear identification, which is essential to create a biological profile and is also required to assess cell type superiority for cartilage repair.

Methods

Cells obtained from three non-diseased/osteoarthritic human knee joints each, were expanded in culture up to passage 10. Characterization studies were performed using flow cytometry; gene expression was studied using RT-PCR; growth kinetics and tri-lineage differentiation was also studied to construct a better profile of chondroprogenitors as well as chondrocytes.

Results and conclusion

Our results showed that both cell populations exhibited similar cell surface characteristics except for non-diseased chondroprogenitors, which showed markedly low expression of CD34 and high expression of CD166. Trilineage data was suggestive of multilineage potential for both cell types with chondroprogenitors showing notably higher glycosaminoglycan and lower calcified matrix deposition. Data acquired from this study aided in describing cellular behavior of human articular cartilage derived chondroprogenitors in conditions not reported earlier. Our comparative analysis suggests that sorting based on a combination of markers (CD34- and CD166+) would yield a population of cells with minimal contamination by chondrocytes, which may provide translatable results in terms of enhanced chondrogenesis and reduced hypertrophy; both indispensable for the field of cartilage regeneration.

中文翻译：

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表征源自非患病和骨关节炎膝关节的人关节软骨细胞和软骨生成剂，以评估基于细胞的治疗的优越性。

目的

由于真正的透明软骨再生低于标准水平，因此基于细胞的治疗一直在进行。作为软骨修复的替代细胞替代品，近来软骨生成器已引起了广泛关注。尽管软骨细胞和软骨生成剂的单源衍生是有利的，但缺乏特征性区分标记会掩盖清晰的鉴定，这对于建立生物学特征至关重要，并且还需要评估软骨修复的细胞类型优越性。

方法

将分别从三个未患病/骨关节炎的人类膝关节中获得的细胞进行培养，直至第10代。使用RT-PCR研究基因表达；还研究了生长动力学和三谱系分化，以构建更好的软骨生成剂和软骨细胞的轮廓。

结果与结论

我们的结果表明，除了未患病的软骨生成器外，两个细胞群体均表现出相似的细胞表面特征，后者表现出CD34的低表达和CD166的高表达。三谱系数据提示两种细胞类型均具有多谱系潜力，而软骨生成剂显示出明显更高的糖胺聚糖和更低的钙化基质沉积。从这项研究中获得的数据有助于描述在早期未报道的情况下人类软骨衍生的软骨生成剂的细胞行为。我们的比较分析表明，基于标记物（CD34-和CD166 +）的组合进行分选将产生软骨细胞污染最小的细胞群，这可能在增强软骨形成和减少肥大方面提供可翻译的结果。