Development of Biocompatable Scaffold Beads for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

초록

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are new research areas investigating how to repair and regenerate impaired organs and tissues using the natural signaling pathway and components of the organism. In the case of joint cartilage, there are no blood vessels and the damaged tissues are not usually regenerated by themselves. Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) is currently performed as a surgical treatment of arthritis. For the treatment of damaged cartilage or initial symptom of osteoarthritis, transplant surgery should be carried out with scaffold beads to support the cells transplanted. Hyaluronic acid (HA) is known to be a good scaffold to make artificial cartilage. In this study, we investigated the possibility of a manufactured HA-atelo scaffold bead as a support material for cartilage cell therapy. We compared the manufactured HA-atelo scaffold beads with two other types of commercial scaffold beads such as Cellgen and Cytodex3. Within 24 hours after surgery, chondrocytes were isolated from the cartilage. The cells obtained from these tissues were mixed with the HA-atelo scaffold beads. The HA-atelo scaffold beads were manufactured through a five-step process including HA dilution, collagen mixture, bead formation, washing, and bead collection. Isolated chondrocytes are cultured and compared in three types of scaffold beads (Cellgen, Cytodex3 and HA-atelo). Cell proliferation was determined by using MTT assay and secreted glycosaminoglycan (GAG) was analyzed quantitatively by using Blyscan GAG assay kit (Biocolor Ltd.). In conclusion, the manufactured HA-atelo scaffold beads provided the best results for the cultivation of chondrocytes and they can be used in cartilage tissue engineering effectively.