Effectiveness of tailored exercise therapy in patients with knee osteoarthritis and comorbidity: a randomized controlled trial

s / Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 24 (2016) S63eS534 S466 796 HYSTEMTM AND HYDROMATRIXTM SCAFFOLDS FOR ARTICULAR CARTILAGE TISSUE ENGINEERING J.H. Yl€arinne y, C. Qu y, M.J. Lammi yz. yUniv. of Umea, Umea, Sweden; zXi’an Jiaotong Univ., Xi'an, China Purpose: The purpose of the articular cartilage is to protect the subchondral bone from both impacts and abrasion caused by normal movement of an individual. In osteoarthritis, the tissue wearing leads in the worst case to almost complete erosion of cartilage tissue in the joint. The goal of cartilage tissue engineering is to develop methods to manufacture implants for cartilage repair. This study was conducted to compare neocartilages generated in scaffolds and scaffold-free, agarose gel-supported primary chondrocyte cultures. Methods: Six million bovine primary chondrocytes were embedded in the HyStemTM (HS) or the HydroMatrixTM (HM)scaffolds, or suspended in chondrocyte culture medium (scaffold-free), and then loaded to the agarose gel supported culture wells. The neocartilages were grown in the presence of hypertonic high glucose DMEM medium in 37 C incubator at 20% O2 and 5% CO2 for one, three or six weeks. By the end of the culture periods, the formed tissues were analyzed by toluidine blue staining of their histological sections for proteoglycans (PGs) and immunostaining for type II collagen. The gene expression measurements of the chondrocyte-specific genes aggrecan, Sox9 and procollagen a1(II), as well as those of procollagen a2(I), were performed using quantitative RT-PCR, and analyses of the PG contents and the structure were conducted by spectrophotometric and agarose gel electrophoretic methods, respectively.