Investigation of growth factor and tenocyte proliferation induced by platelet rich plasma (PRP) in a 3-chamber co-culture device

Abstract

The platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has become an attractive topic for soft tissue healing therapy recently. While some clinical reports revealed the effective treatments for knee osteoarthritis, lateral epicondylitis, and rotator cuff tears, other case studies showed that there was no statistically significant healing improvement. The efficacy of the PRP therapy is still unclear clinically. Thus, a significant amount of basic studies should be conducted to optimize the preparation procedure and the platelet concentration of the PRP. In this work, a 3-chamber co-culture device was developed for the PRP study in order to reduce the usage of primary cells and to avoid the PRP gelation effect. The device was a culture, well partitioning into 3 sub-chambers. Tenocytes and PRP could be respectively loaded into the sub-chambers and co-cultured under the interlinked medium. The results showed that a higher platelet number in the PRP could diffuse higher concentration of the growth factors in the medium and induce higher tenocyte proliferation. The 3-chamber co-culture device provides a simple and practical tool for the PRP study. It is potentially applied for optimizing the preparation procedure and platelet concentration of the PRP therapy.