Effects of osteochondral defect size on cartilage regeneration using a double-network hydrogel

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Fuminori Kanaya¹  Keiko Goto²  Kotaro Higa³  Nobuto Kitamura⁴  Kazunori Yasuda⁵  Jian Ping Gong⁶  Takayuki Kurokawa⁶ 

[1] Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan;Department of Sports Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita-15, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, 060-8638, Sapporo, Japan;Department of Sports Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita-15, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, 060-8638, Sapporo, Japan;Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan;Department of Sports Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita-15, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, 060-8638, Sapporo, Japan;Global Station for Soft Matter, Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan;Global Station for Soft Matter, Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan;Laboratory of Soft and Wet Matter, Department of Advanced Transdisciplinary Sciences, Faculty of Advanced Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan;Global Station for Soft Matter, Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan;

关键词: Cartilage repair;    Double-network hydrogel;    Osteochondral defect;    Rabbit model;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12891-017-1578-1

 received in 2017-03-02, accepted in 2017-05-12,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThere has been increased interest in one-step cell-free procedures to avoid the problems related to cell manipulation and its inherent disadvantages. We have studied the chondrogenic induction ability of a PAMPS/PDMAAm double-network (DN) gel and found it to induce chondrogenesis in animal osteochondral defect models. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the healing process and the degree of cartilage regeneration induced by the cell-free method using DN gel are influenced by the size of osteochondral defects.MethodsA total of 63 mature female Japanese white rabbits were used in this study, randomly divided into 3 groups of 21 rabbits each. A 2.5-mm diameter osteochondral defect was created in the femoral trochlea of the patellofemoral joint of bilateral knees in Group I, a 4.3-mm osteochondral defect in Group II, and a 5.8-mm osteochondral defect in Group III. In the right knee of each animal, a DN gel plug was implanted so that a vacant space of 2-mm depth was left above the plug. In the left knee, we did not conduct any treatment to obtain control data. Animals were sacrificed at 2, 4, and 12 weeks after surgery, and gross and histological evaluations were made.ResultsThe present study demonstrated that all sizes of the DN gel implanted defects as well as the 2.5mm untreated defects showed cartilage regeneration at 4 and 12 weeks. The 4.3-mm and 5.8-mm untreated defects did not show cartilage regeneration during the 12-week period. The quantitative score reported by O’Driscoll et al. was significantly higher in the 4.3-mm and 5.8-mm DN gel-implanted defects than the untreated defects at 4 and 12 weeks (p < 0.05). The 2.5-mm and 4.3-mm DN gel implanted defects maintained relatively high macroscopic and histological scores for the 12-week implantation period, while the histological score of the 5.8-mm DN gel implanted defect had decreased somewhat but statistically significantly at 12 weeks (p = 0.0057).ConclusionsThe DN gel induced cartilage regeneration in defects between 2.5 and 5.8 mm, offering a promising device to establish a cell-free cartilage regeneration therapy and applicable to various sizes of osteochondral defects.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017