Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Umbilical cord Wharton jelly matrix is rich in hyaluronic acid, glycosaminoglycan and collagen, with similar components to natural chondrocyte extracellular matrix. Therefore, human umbilical cord-extracted Wharton jelly matrix is likely to become an ideal tissue engineering scaffold material of cartilage tissue. 
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the therapeutic effects of autologous adipose derived stem cells loaded onto human umbilical cord Wharton’s Jelly matrix-derived scaffold in repair of full-thickness articular cartilage defects of the knee in rabbits.
METHODS: After induced differentiation into chondrocytes, rabbit auatologous adipose derived stem cells at a final concentration of 1010/L were compounded with human umbilical cord Wharton’s jelly matrix-derived scaffold and further cultured for 1 week to construct tissue-engineered cartilage. The full-thickness articular cartilage defects of the knee in rabbits were repaired by the tissue-engineered cartilage (experimental group). The therapeutic effects were compared between experimental group, scaffold group and blank group. At 3 months after surgery, gross observation, histological examination, glycosaminoglycan (GAG) and total collagen quantification and biomechanical tests were applied to analyze the results.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: In the experimental group, most of defects were repaired by hyaline cartilage. In the scaffold group, most of defects were repaired by fibrous tissue. In the blank group, the defects were repaired with less fibrous tissue or not repaired. It is feasible to use adipose derived stem cells as the seed cells of cartilage tissue engineering. The constructed cartilage by tissue engineering can effectively repair knee articular cartilage defects and human umbilical cord Wharton’s jelly matrix-derived scaffold can be used as a good cartilage tissue engineering scaffold.