Cartilage

Summary

Cartilage is a resilient and smooth type of connective tissue. In tetrapods, it covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints as articular cartilage, and is a structural component of many body parts including the rib cage, the neck and the bronchial tubes, and the intervertebral discs. In other taxa, such as chondrichthyans, but also in cyclostomes, it may constitute a much greater proportion of the skeleton. It is not as hard and rigid as bone, but it is much stiffer and much less flexible than muscle. The matrix of cartilage is made up of glycosaminoglycans, proteoglycans, collagen fibers and, sometimes, elastin. Because of its rigidity, cartilage often serves the purpose of holding tubes open in the body. Examples include the rings of the trachea, such as the cricoid cartilage and carina. Cartilage is composed of specialized cells called chondrocytes that produce a large amount of collagenous extracellular matrix, abundant ground substance that is rich in proteoglycan a

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartilage

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Influence of TECK on chondrocyte differentiation

Benjamin David

Nowadays, cartilage repair is a worldwide centre of interest due to the low potential of cartilage to heal spontaneously and the increasing number of patients around the world. One of the techniques to treat cartilage defect is to use autologous human serum in cell-free implants to recruit chondrocytes. However, the serum is variable in its quality and therefore the chemokine TECK might be used as a reliable bioactive pharmaceutical component to recruit chondrocytes in cartilage regeneration techniques. In this study, the influence of the chemokine TECK on chondrocytes re-differentiation was studied during early chondrogenesis. So, high-density pellets were formed from three donors and cultivated for two and four days in three different concentrations of TECK, 0 [nM], 10 [nM] and 1000 [nM]. The high-density pellets were compared and analyzed at the protein and mRNA levels. Indeed, proteoglycans and type II collagen were stained to reveal the production of these two essential markers of chondrogenesis and RT-PCR was performed to evaluate the mRNA expression levels of various genes, type II collagen, type IX collagen, aggrecan, Sox 9, COMP, MMP 13 and Timp 1-2. It resulted that chondrocytes of two out of three donors showed a potential to re-differentatiate. In fact, these two donors increased their productions of proteolycans and type II collagen between day two and day four, a lapse of time considered as early chondrogenesis. These results were confirmed by the mRNA expression levels, which indicated increases of the expression levels in type II collagen, type IX collagen, aggrecan and Sox 9. Thus, the chemokine TECK showed no evidence that it modified the behaviours of chondrocytes in high-density pellets during the first four days. So, TECK might be a reliable bioactive pharmaceutical component to recruit chondrocytes in order to regenerate cartilage in the future

2010

Indentation-Type Scanning Force Microscopy, a Versatile Tool for Imaging, Measuring and Manipulating Soft Biological Tissues, for Example, Normal, Diseased and Engineered Cartilage

2006

Decellularization of bovine articular cartilage by supercritical carbon dioxide as a matrix for cartilage repair

Giulia Weissenberger

Decellularized extracellular matrix (ECM) derived scaﬀolds serve as potential candidates in the application of cartilage regeneration to guide cells into proliferating and maintaining the structural zones of articular cartilage. ECM tissue matrices oﬀer framework and structural support and guid-ance in a tissue engineering cartilage scaﬀold. To generate such a scaﬀold, decellularization must be performed in a fast and eﬃcient manner to remove cellular products to minimally damage and alterate the ECM. Here, we introduce a novel method used in cartilage decellularization involving a standard cartilage pre-treatment process paired with the surfactant, LS-54, and supercritical carbon dioxide to quickly remove cellular components, with DNA removal reduced by 80%, while sterilizing the matrix. Large pores and no visual nuclei were seen in the tissue. Recellularization was studied with mechanical stimulation using compression release induced suction (CRIS) and an in-house perfusion setup.

2017