Isolation and characterization of side population stem cells in articular synovial tissue

Background Autologous chondrocyte implantation is an established technique for the repair of degenerated articular cartilage. Recently, the detection of side population (SP) cells, which have the ability to strongly efflux Hoechst 33342 (Ho) fluorescence dye, has attracted attention as a method of stem cell isolation. Although SP cells from synovial tissue were expected to be an excellent source for this tissue engineering, their precise character in the synovial tissue has not been determined.