Use of Adult Stem Cells for Cartilage Tissue Engineering: Current Status and Future Developments

Abstract

Due to their low self-repair ability, cartilage defects that result from joint injury, aging, or osteoarthritis, are the most often irreversible and are a major cause of joint pain and chronic disability. So, in recent years, researchers and surgeons have been working hard to elaborate cartilage repair interventions for patients who suffer from cartilage damage. However, current methods do not perfectly restore hyaline cartilage and may lead to the apparition of fibro- or hypertrophic cartilage. In the next years, the development of new strategies using adult stem cells, in scaffolds, with supplementation of culture medium and/or culture in low oxygen tension should improve the quality of neoformed cartilage. Through these solutions, some of the latest technologies start to bring very promising results in repairing cartilage from traumatic injury or chondropathies. This review discusses the current knowledge about the use of adult stem cells in the context of cartilage tissue engineering and presents clinical trials in progress, as well as in the future, especially in the field of bioprinting stem cells.

Human articular cartilage repair: Sources and detection of cytotoxicity and genotoxicity in photo-crosslinkable hydrogel bioscaffolds

“…Mature chondrocytes instead possess poor replicative capacity and are prone to dedifferentiation, thus are not ideal for the purpose of cartilage regeneration . hADSCs are currently under consideration for several clinical applications (https://www.clinicaltrial.gov/), and they are known to accumulate DNA damage and undergo senescence during in vitro cultivation, so stem cell preparations already undergo rigorous testing in order to ensure safety for the recipient . These cells are also known for their resistance to chemotherapeutics drugs and their promising use as drug delivery tools, especially for bone‐derived tumors .…”

Combining Innovative Bioink and Low Cell Density for the Production of 3D-Bioprinted Cartilage Substitutes: A Pilot Study

“…However, both their poor availability within cartilage and their fibroblastic dedifferentiation during the monolayer expansion phase remain crucial restricting factors. With this in mind, researchers now use mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as a powerful alternative: they are sufficiently robust to survive the shear stress and pressure inherent to the bioprinting process [9] and exert a good proliferation capacity and an excellent potential for TGF-β-driven chondrogenicity in a purpose-made dedicated 3D environment [10]. MSCs can be extracted from multiple tissues, such as bone marrow, adipose tissue, synovium, periosteum, and muscle, and are capable of renewing themselves through cell division and can differentiate into multilineage cells, including articular cells [11], with the typical ancillary chondral extracellular matrix production of type 2 collagen and proteoglycans.…”

Matrix remodeling and mechanotransduction in in vitro chondrogenesis: Implications towards functional stem cell‐based cartilage tissue engineering

“…The usage of native biomechanical and biophysical cues to enhance effective chondrogenic differentiation of stem cells has been the basis of functional tissue engineering strategies for stem cell‐based cartilage tissue repair . Tissues that normally experience a biomechanical environment in vivo could benefit from the simulated microenvironmental conditions in vitro .…”