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New hope for hyaline cartilage repair

February, 2012

Hyaline cartilage is found at the joint surface of many bones, where it helps to cushion and protect the bone surfaces. Hyaline cartilage does not have a blood supply or nerve supply and consequently has a limited capacity for growth and repair - and which may result in debilitating conditions such as osteoarthritis. Damaged hyaline cartilage may be replaced by fibrocartilage (scar tissue). This differs from hyaline cartilage in that it contains type 1 collagen, which provides a cartilage matrix with different biomechanical properties, impaired mechanical function and consequent morbidity. The repair of hyaline cartilage injury or degeneration with hyaline rather than fibrocartilage is a challenging clinical problem. Regeneration of hyaline cartilage using autologous stem cell transplantation represents an attractive therapeutic option. In a recent study, Hiramatsu et al explored the possibility of using skin-derived cells as cell source for hyaline repair.

Hiramatsu et al investigated whether hyaline cartilage cells could be created from mouse skin cells. This represented a challenging prospect as skin cells by their nature express type 1 collagen in abundance. To create hyaline cartilage cells, some of the fundamental characteristics of skin cells would need to be eliminated and new characteristics induced. The team demonstrated that retroviral expression of two reprogramming factors (c-Myc and Klf4) and the chondrogenic factor SOX9 could result in the induction of chondrogenic cells from adult mouse skin cells. Some resulting cell lines were found to generate stable hyaline cartilage-like tissue. The authors concluded that their approach could potentially lead to the preparation of patient-specific hyaline cartilage directly from skin, without the need to first create induced pluripotent stem cells. Time lapse observations of the course of chondrogenic cell induction were performed using BioStation CT.

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