Engineering chondrogenesis with chondroprogenitor/stem cells in gene-transferred co-culture system

• Main Author: Wang, Don Gan
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Research Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering::Biotechnology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/41876
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Cartilage restoration continues to present a tremendous clinical challenge due to its nonvascular nature. Many studies have demonstrated that chondrogenesis of progenitor cells can be achieved in vitro by manual dose of growth factors; however it remains a vital difficulty in feeding growth factors to implanted therapeutic cells in vivo. The current project aims at cartilage tissue engineering through a co-culture system, in which, genedelivered de-differentiated chondrocytes (The Transfected Companion Cells, TCCs) provide sustained, localized and over-expressed growth factors to mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) (The Therapeutic Progenitor Cells, TPCs) , and thus induce MSCs to differentiate into chondrocytes.