Development of a three-dimensional (3D) interactive platform to study cartilage destruction in rheumatoid arthritis

• Main Author: Low, Patricia Pei Fen
• Other Authors: Wang Dongan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Bioengineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/65031
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a heterogeneous joint disease that degrades cartilage overtime, which is a chronic inflammatory and destructive arthropathy. In addition to, RA is known as an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology and has no cure. The current available models are the 2D monolayer models and animal models. However, 2D monolayer models are inability to recapitulate the in vivo situations of the complex 3D structures of native cartilage, whereas, animal models have the hurdles of high costs, ethical problematic and not able to reveal the underlying molecular pathways that regulate the development and progression of the disease. The objective of this project is to develop a 3D in vitro RA model, to study the inflammatory joint process and to examine the functional role of distinct cell populations in contributing to cartilage destruction. Results had illustrated that apoptosis were increased in the established model. Synthetic activity via qPCR analysis of anabolic gene, such as collagen type I, collagen type II and aggrecan are down regulating. Proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β), and catabolic gene such as MMPs are up regulating suggested the increased of degradative activity. Histology and Immunohistochemical staining of proteoglycan, collagen type I and collagen type II had also revealed extensive degradation of cartilage. To conclude, results had suggested that 3D in vitro cartilaginous model for mimicking native RA cartilage has been established.