Abstract
Cartilage is an avascular tissue with low cellularity and insufficient self-repair response. In clinical practice, a large articular cartilage defect is usually fixed by cartilage transplantation. Importantly, the fast repair process has been demanded postoperatively in the area between the host cartilage and the transplanted cartilage. In the past few years, magnetic nanoparticles have drawn great attention due to their biocompatible, biodegradable, and nontoxic properties. In addition, the nanoparticles can easily pass through the cell plasma membrane and increase the cellular uptake efficiency. Here, a therapeutic drug delivery strategy was proposed for cartilage repair. The prepared kartogenin (KGN)-conjugated magnetic nanocarriers (KGN@NCs) promoted the viability of chondrocytes in vitro. In a rat model of cartilage transplantation, intra-articularly delivered KGN@NCs generated cartilage with a flat surface and a high level of aggrecan in vivo. Notably, KGN@NCs were also capable of improving the pain-related motor functions. They promoted the motor functional parameters including the print area and intensity to restore to a normal level compared with the single KGN. Therefore, these therapeutic drug nanocarriers provided the potential for cartilage repair.
Highlights
Cartilage, a kind of avascular tissue only with one cell type of chondrocytes, lacks self-repair response [1, 2]
The resulting KGNconjugated magnetic NCs (KGN@NCs) was of 222.30 ± 1.09 nm size on average that increased by 25.10 nm (p < 0.001), but the zeta potential of
These results indicated that KGN@NCs was successfully synthesized with a uniform structure
Summary
A kind of avascular tissue only with one cell type of chondrocytes, lacks self-repair response [1, 2]. About 60% of the patients who receive arthroscopic examinations have articular cartilage lesions, of which 67% are identified as focal defects [7]. There have been estimated 2,000,000 patients around the USA who underwent surgical procedures for articular cartilage defects annually in the past few years [8]. The traditional surgical treatments for these cartilage defects include bone marrow stimulation, autograft transplantation, and allograft transplantation [9, 10]. The therapeutic effect of bone marrow stimulation is minor for a large defect that leads to fibro-cartilage formation. Surgeons mostly choose autograft transplantation to fix large cartilage defects. This procedure has potential advantages, as it involves easier process and lower risk. Fast postoperative repair of the area between the host cartilage and the transplanted cartilage is urgently demanded after the surgery
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