Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Current clinical methods to treat articular cartilage lesions provide temporary relief of the symptoms but fail to permanently restore the damaged tissue.
Tissue engineering, using mesenchymal stem cells MSCs combined with scaffolds and bioactive factors, is viewed as a promising method for repairing cartilage injuries. However, current tissue engineered constructs display inferior mechanical properties compared to native articular cartilage, which could be attributed to the lack of structural organization of the extracellular matrix ECM of these engineered constructs in comparison to the highly oriented structure of articular cartilage ECM.
We previously showed that we can guide MSCs undergoing chondrogenesis to align using microscale guidance channels on the surface of a two-dimensional 2-D collagen scaffold, which resulted in the deposition of aligned ECM within the channels and enhanced mechanical properties of the constructs.
In this study, we developed a technique to roll 2-D collagen scaffolds containing MSCs within guidance channels in order to produce a large-scale, three-dimensional 3-D tissue engineered cartilage constructs with enhanced mechanical properties compared to current constructs.
After rolling the MSC-scaffold constructs into a 3-D cylindrical structure, the constructs were cultured for 21 days under chondrogenic culture conditions. The microstructure architecture and mechanical properties of the constructs were evaluated using imaging and compressive testing.
