Proteomic, mechanical, and biochemical development of tissue-engineered neocartilage

Abstract

Background: The self-assembling process of cartilage tissue engineering is a promising technique to heal cartilage defects, preventing osteoarthritic changes. Given that chondrocytes dedifferentiate when expanded, it is not known if cellular expansion affects the development of self-assembled neocartilage. The objective of this study was to use proteomic, mechanical, and biochemical analyses to quantitatively investigate the development of self-assembled neocartilage derived from passaged, rejuvenated costal chondrocytes. Methods: Yucatan minipig costal chondrocytes were used to create self-assembled neocartilage constructs. After 1, 4, 7, 14, 28, 56, or 84 days of self-assembly, constructs were analyzed through a variety of histological, biomechanical, biochemical, and proteomic techniques. Results: It was found that temporal trends in neocartilage formation are similar to those seen in native hyaline articular cartilage development. For example, between days 7 and 84 of culture, tensile Young’s modulus increased 4.4-times, total collagen increased 2.7-times, DNA content decreased 69.3%, collagen type II increased 1.5-times, and aggrecan dropped 55.3%, mirroring trends shown in native knee cartilage. Importantly, collagen type X, which is associated with cartilage calcification, remained at low levels (≤ 0.05%) at all neocartilage developmental time points, similar to knee cartilage (< 0.01%) and unlike donor rib cartilage (0.98%). Conclusions: In this work, bottom-up proteomics, a powerful tool to interrogate tissue composition, was used for the first time to quantify and compare the proteome of a developing engineered tissue to a recipient tissue. Furthermore, it was shown that self-assembled, costal chondrocyte-derived neocartilage is suitable for a non-homologous approach in the knee.