The repair of articular cartilage not only owns a huge market, but also is a classic academic problem. One of the mainstream clinical treatments is autologous chondrocyte transplantation (ACI). In order to obtain sufficient chondrocytes, autologous chondrocytes need to go through expansion several times in vitro. However, chondrocytes are easy to dedifferentiate during culturing, and lose their ability to form normal cartilage after implanting. So it is very meaningful to elucidate the cues to regulate the dedifferentiation of chondrocytes during in vitro culture.
Ding¨s group developed a unique micropatterning technic to fabricate RGD microislands on persistently non-fouling PEG background, by which single chondrocytes could be well localized. Using these micropatterns, they made the first study of the effects of the size and shape of cells on chondrocyte dedifferentiation. Chondrocytes derived from joint cartilage of SD rats were found to be more likely going dedifferentiation when incubated in a more spread and elongated condition in the examined cell geometry range, whatever in the normoxia or hypoxia condition. This trend is not conclusive without the usage of their group¨s polymer material technic to exclude the interference of other factors.
The article with Bin Cao, a PhD student supervised by Professor Ding as the first author was published in Biomaterials.
Effects of spreading areas and aspect ratios of single cells on dedifferentiation of chondrocytes
Bin Cao, Rong Peng, Zhenhua Li, Jiandong Ding*, Biomaterials, 35, 6871-6881 (2014)
link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961214005201
Such a work was selected into Academic Corridor by the Graduate Union as follows:
