In vitro cell culture system interaction for drug testing and development

The invention relates to vitro in a cell interaction culture system for testing and developing medicaments, comprising a first cell culture made from pelletized and pre-cultivated mesenchymal cells, preferably articular pig chondrocytes, and a second cell culture which is applied to the first cell culture in a centrifugal manner and comprises human, immortalised synovial fibroblast cell lines (three-dimensional tissue engineering). Said culture system can be used to study the effect of biological and chemical substances, biomaterials, mechanical-physical influences and gene transfer systems for therapeutic purposes which, in particular are very close to conditions exhibited in vivo in healthy as well as in chronically diseased tissue for example joints and which can be used for identifying new points of therapeutic attack.