Multiple mesenchymal progenitor cell subtypes with distinct functional potential are present within the intimal layer of the hip synovium

Abstract

BackgroundThe synovial membrane adjacent to the articular cartilage is home to synovial mesenchymal progenitor cell (sMPC) populations that have the ability to undergo chondrogenesis. While it has been hypothesized that multiple subtypes of stem and progenitor cells exist in vivo, there is little evidence supporting this hypothesis in human tissues. Furthermore, in most of the published literature on this topic, the cells are cultured before derivation of clonal populations. This gap in the literature makes it difficult to determine if there are distinct MPC subtypes in human synovial tissues, and if so, if these sMPCs express any markers in vivo/in situ that provide information in regards to the function of specific MPC subtypes (e.g. cells with increased chondrogenic capacity)? Therefore, the current study was undertaken to determine if any of the classical MPC cell surface markers provide insight into the differentiation capacity of sMPCs.MethodsClonal populations of sMPCs were derived from a cohort of patients with hip osteoarthritis (OA) and patients at high risk to develop OA using indexed cell sorting. Tri-differentiation potential and cell surface receptor expression of the resultant clones was determined.ResultsA number of clones with distinct differentiation potential were derived from this cohort, yet the most common cell surface marker profile on MPCs (in situ) that demonstrated chondrogenic potential was determined to be CD90+/CD44+/CD73+. A validation cohort was employed to isolate cells with only this cell surface profile. Isolating cells directly from human synovial tissue with these three markers alone, did not enrich for cells with chondrogenic capacity.ConclusionsTherefore, additional markers are required to further discriminate the heterogeneous subtypes of MPCs and identify sMPCs with functional properties that are believed to be advantageous for clinical application.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12891-019-2495-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Gene Expression Signatures of Synovial Fluid Multipotent Stromal Cells in Advanced Knee Osteoarthritis and Following Knee Joint Distraction

“…Future studies should also include investigations of synovial MSC subpopulations and comparing them, through high-throughput single cell-based analysis, to SF MSCs. Up to now, there exist multiple studies presenting different phenotypes and topographies of MSCs in human synovium (Sivasubramaniyan et al, 2012;O'Brien et al, 2017;Mizuno et al, 2018;Affan et al, 2019) or rodent synovium (Roelofs et al, 2017); and their relationships with synovial fibroblasts (Croft et al, 2019), which may be pro-inflammatory, remain unclear. In the future, it would be interesting to establish which subset of synovial MSCs may be preferentially shed into the fluid, using recently developed in vitro methodologies (Kohno et al, 2018).…”

The combinatory effect of sinusoidal electromagnetic field and VEGF promotes osteogenesis and angiogenesis of mesenchymal stem cell-laden PCL/HA implants in a rat subcritical cranial defect

“…For tri-differentiation analysis, rBMSCs were cultured with inductive medium respectively and evaluated by histological staining after 3 weeks differentiation according to the previous study [30]. The results are shown in Additional file 2.…”

Addition of High Molecular Weight Hyaluronic Acid to Fibroblast-Like Stromal Cells Modulates Endogenous Hyaluronic Acid Metabolism and Enhances Proteolytic Processing and Secretion of Versican

“…Thirdly, this multipotent cell population has been described in post-injury responses, including cellular proliferation, HA accumulation, and fibrotic remodeling, as well as having a potential for neo-vascularization [57], chondrogenesis [58], or modulation of pain responses [59]. Notably, such multipotent properties have also been reported for cells in synovial membranes [60][61][62] and the superficial zone of articular cartilage [63].…”