Osteoarthritis is characterized by a progressive degradation of articular cartilage leading to loss of joint function. The molecular mechanisms regulating pathogenesis and progression of osteoarthritis are poorly understood. Remarkably, some characteristics of this joint disease resemble chondrocyte differentiation processes during skeletal development by endochondral ossification. In healthy a...

Synovial joints and articular cartilage play crucial roles in the skeletal function, but relatively little is actually known about their embryonic development. Here we first focused on the interzone, a thin mesenchymal cell layer forming at future joint sites that is widely thought to be critical for joint and articular cartilage development. To determine interzone cell origin and fate, we micr...

The aim of this study was to determine whether exposure of human articular cartilage to hyperosmotic saline (0.9%, 600 mOsm) reduces in situ chondrocyte death following a standardised mechanical injury produced by a scalpel cut compared with the same assault and exposure to normal saline (0.9%, 285 mOsm). Human cartilage explants were exposed to normal (control) and hyperosmotic 0.9% saline sol...

INTRODUCTION: Since partial defects in articular cartilage do not heal spontaneously, whereas injuries that penetrate the subchondral bone undergo some repair [1], we have begun to consider the development of tissue engineered osteochondral constructs consisting of a hybrid scaffold of chondrocyte-seeded hydrogel and devitalized trabecular bone; such a scaffold may improve cartilage repair and ...

Based on our findings that PHD2 is a negative regulator of chondrocyte differentiation and that hypoxia signaling is implicated in the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis, we investigated the consequence of disruption of the Phd2 gene in chondrocytes on the articular cartilage phenotype in mice. Immunohistochemistry detected high expression of PHD2 in the superficial zone (SZ), while PHD3 and HIF-1α...

objective(s) articular cartilage tissue defects cannot be repaired by the proliferation of resident chondrocytes. autologous chondrocyte transplantation (act) is a relatively new therapeutic approach to cover full thickness articular cartilage defects by in vitro grown chondrocytes from the joint of a patient. therefore, we investigated the redifferentiation capability of human chondrocytes mai...

[Purpose] To investigate the influence of knee immobilization period on recovery of histological damages in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) insertion and articular cartilage in rabbits. This knowledge is important for determining the appropriate rehabilitation approach for patients with ligament injuries, fracture, disuse atrophy, and degenerative joint disease. [Materials and Methods] For...

Articular cartilage injuries and osteoarthritis (OA) are commonly encountered in joint diseases. Current treatments aim at generating hyaline-like repair tissue with a stable, permanent chondrocyte phenotype. However, the repair tissue is often accompanied by chondrocyte hypertrophy and bony outgrowths, in particular with respect to bone marrow-eroding techniques [1,2]. Th e progressive abnorma...

Articular cartilage is characterized by low cell density of only one cell type, chondrocytes, and has limited self-healing properties. When articular cartilage is affected by traumatic injuries, a therapeutic strategy such as autologous chondrocyte implantation is usually proposed for its treatment. This approach requires in vitro chondrocyte expansion to yield high cell number for cell transpl...

Transglutaminases are a family of enzymes that catalyze the formation of epsilon-(gamma-glutamyl)lysine isopeptide bonds in proteins, an activity that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of cartilage matrix mineralization in degenerative arthritis. Type II transglutaminase and thrombin-activatable factor XIII have been identified in articular cartilage. Thrombin, a coagulation protease, is ...