study of chondrogenic potential of stem cells in co-culture with chondrons

objective(s): three-dimensional biomimetic scaffolds have widespread applications in biomedical tissue engineering due to similarity of their nanofibrous architecture to native extracellular matrix. co-culture system has stimulatory effect on chondrogenesis of adult mesenchymal stem cells. this work presents a co-culture strategy using human articular chondrons and adipose-derived stem cells (ascs) from infrapatellar fat pad (ipfp) for cartilage tissue production. materials and methods: isolated stem cells were characterized by flowcytometry. electrospun and polycaprolactone (pcl) scaffolds (900 nm fiber diameter) was obtained from bon yakhteh (tehran- iran) and human infrapatellar fat pad-derived stem cells (ipfp-ascs) were seeded on them. ipfp- ascs on scaffolds were co-cultured with articular chondrons using transwell. after 21 day, chondrogenic differentiation of stem cell was evaluated by determining the genes expression of collagen2, aggrecan and indian hedgehog using real- time rt-pcr. results: genes expression of collagen2, aggrecan by ipfp-ascs did not alter significantly in comparison with control group. howevers, expression of indian hedgehog decreased significantly compared to control group (p˂ 0.05). conclusion: these findings indicate that chondrons obtained from osteoarthritic articular cartilage did not stimulate chondrogenic differentiation of ipfp-ascs in co-culture.