生物反应器中的力学刺激促进组织工程软骨再生

BACKGROUND: Cartilage tissue engineering has been widely used to achieve cartilage regeneration in vitro and repair cartilage defects. Tissue-engineered cartilage mainly consists of chondrocytes, cartilage scaffold and in vitro environment. OBJECTIVE: To mimic the environment of articular cartilage development in vivo, in order to increase the bionic features of tissue-engineered cartilage scaffold and effectiveness of cartilage repair. METHODS: Knee joint chondrocytes were isolated from New Zealand white rabbits, 2 months old, and expanded in vitro. The chondrocytes at passage 2 were seeded onto a scaffold of articular cartilage extracellular matrix in the concentration of 1×106/L to prepare cell-scaffold composites. Cell-scaffold composites were cultivated in an Instron bioreactor with mechanical compression (1 Hz, 3 hours per day, 10% compression) as experimental group for 7, 14, 24, 28 days or cultured statically for 1 day as control group.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Morphological observations demonstrated that the thickness, elastic modulus and maximum load of the composite in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group, which were positively related to time (P < 0.05). Histological staining showed the proliferation of chondrocytes, formation of cartilage lacuna and synthesis of proteoglycan in the experimental group through hematoxylin-eosin staining and safranin-O staining, which were increased gradually with mechanical stimulation time. These results were consistent with the findings of proteoglycan kit. Real-time quantitative PCR revealed that mRNA expressions of collagen type I and collagen type II were significantly higher in the experimental group than the control group (P < 0.05). The experimental group showed the highest mRNA expression of collagen type I and collagen type II at 21 and 28 days of mechanical stimulation, respectively (P < 0.05). With the mechanical stimulation of bioreactor, the cell-scaffold composite can produce more extracellular matrix, such as collagen and proteoglycan, strengthen the mechanical properties to be more coincident with the in vivo environment of cartilage development, and increase the bionic features. With the progress of tissue engineering, the clinical bioregeneration of damaged cartilage will be achieved.  中国组织工程研究杂志出版内容重点：组织构建；骨细胞；软骨细胞；细胞培养；成纤维细胞；血管内皮细胞；骨质疏松；组织工程

Bioreactor cultivation and mechanical stimulation for regeneration of tissue-engineered cartilage