Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) can differentiate into chondrocytes-like cells by factor induction. However, induced cells difficultly form mature chondrocytes in an organism, and still have the ability of secreting cartilage matrix, anti-pressure and anti-friction.
OBJECTIVE: To compare and analyze the effect of the induction of BMSCs by co-culture BMSCs and chondrocytes induction and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 induction.
METHODS: Chondrocytes and the third passage BMSCs were harvested from Sprague Dawley rats, and incubated in Transwell co-culture system at 1: 2, 1: 1 and 2: 1. Simultaneously, TGF-β1 induction group served as a control. Cell proliferation and matrix synthesis would be observed under a phase contrast microscopy. MTT assay, glucose amino glycan (GAG) content detection and Western Blot assay were adopted to check the expression of type Ⅱ collagen gene.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The result of BMSCs and chondrocytes (1: 2) induction was quite the same as that of 10 μg/L TGF-β1 induction, but as the increasing percentage of chondrocytes in induction, the inductive result obviously has an advantage over TGF-β1 induction. When induced cells come to some rate, the result would not change, which proved that co-culture BMSCs and chondrocytes can induce BMSC transformation into chondrocytes. The induction result was positively related to the percentage of chondrocytes at the beginning; when chondrocytes come to some rate, the result of BMSCs induction does not significantly change. Above-mentioned results have shown that BMSC induction into chondrocytes exists saturation.