Abstract
Umbilical cord Wharton's jelly-derived mesenchymal stem cell (WJMSC) is a new-found mesenchymal stem cell in recent years with multiple lineage potential. Due to its abundant resources, no damage procurement, and lower immunogenicity than other adult MSCs, WJMSC promises to be a good xenogenous cell candidate for tissue engineering. This in vivo pilot study explored the use of human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells (hWJMSCs) containing a tissue engineering construct xenotransplant in rabbits to repair full-thickness cartilage defects in the femoral patellar groove. We observed orderly spatial-temporal remodeling of hWJMSCs into cartilage tissues during repair over 16 months, with characteristic architectural features, including a hyaline-like neocartilage layer with good surface regularity, complete integration with adjacent host cartilage, and regenerated subchondral bone. No immune rejection was detected when xenograft hWJMSCs were implanted into rabbit cartilage defects. The repair results using hWJMSCs were superior to those of chondrogenically induced hWJMSCs after assessing gross appearance and histological grading scores. These preliminary results suggest that using novel undifferentiated hWJMSCs as seed cells might be a better approach than using transforming growth factor-β-induced differentiated hWJMSCs for in vivo tissue engineering treatment of cartilage defects. hWJMSC allografts may be promising for clinical applications.
Highlights
Damage to articular cartilage is usually caused by sports injuries, accidental trauma, and aging
Characterization and Surface Markers for Cells Derived from hWJ. hWJMSCs began to migrate from the explants after 5–7 days in culture with Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM)/F-12 and 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS)
Cartilage Regeneration in Joint Articular Defects of Rabbits. Both the hWJMSCs and hWJMSC-Cs attached to the scaffolds and proliferated for up to 2 weeks
Summary
Damage to articular cartilage is usually caused by sports injuries, accidental trauma, and aging. After a traumatic or pathological injury, hyaline articular cartilage, which is the load-bearing joint tissue, has very limited or no intrinsic capacity for self-repair, and even minor lesions or injuries can lead to progressive damage and joint degeneration. Used treatments for articular cartilage damage, such as surgical interventions (microfracture and osteochondral auto- or allografts), are less than satisfactory, rarely restore full function, and may lead to fibrocartilage but not hyaline articular cartilage in the long-term. The long-term success of cartilage repair depends on regenerative methodologies that restore articular cartilage to a close duplicate of native tissue. The development of tissue engineering-based cartilage repair methods has been pursued to provide more functional biological tissues. Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) based engineered cartilage was first reported by Brittberg et al in 1994 [1]; this treatment requires extracting chondrocytes directly from the patient, inducing additional donor site morbidity of healthy articular cartilage
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