Meniscus Tissue Engineering Using Synovium-derived Stem Cells and Small Intestinal Submucosa

Introduction Injury or loss of the meniscus can lead to osteoarthritis and irreversible joint damage. Recently, tissue engineering-based meniscus regeneration has been attempted to recover meniscus injury. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have demonstrated potential for meniscus regeneration . Of them, synovium-derived stem cells (SDSCs) display the greatest ability for chondrogenic differentiation , which are believed to benefit healing and remodeling in damaged meniscus, particularly in the avascular regions. Recently, small intestinal submucosa (SIS) has been successfully utilized both in an unseeded form to promote meniscus regeneration [3] and also as a cell-seeded scaffold to regenerate various tissues . SIS is predominantly composed of type I collagen, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and various growth factors, which may facilitate meniscus cell (MC) guided SDSC differentiation. However, no studies on meniscus regeneration using cell-seeded SIS constructs have been done. In this study, we hypothesized that meniscus constructs can be engineered in vitro using the cell mixture of MCs and SDSCs on SIS scaffolds.