Electrospun nanofibrous meshes cultured with Wharton’s Jelly Stem Cell: an alternative for cartilage regeneration, without the need of growth factors

摘要

Many efforts are being directed worldwide to the treatment of OA-focal lesions.The majority of those efforts comprise either the refinement of surgicaltechniques or combinations of biomaterials with various autologous cells.Herein, we tested electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibrous meshes forcartilage tissue engineering. For that, articular chondrocytes (hACs) isolatedfrom human osteoarthritic joints and Whartonâ s Jelly Stem Cells (hWJSCs) arecultured on electrospun nanofiber meshes, without adding external growthfactors. We observed higher glycosaminoglycans production and higher overexpressionof cartilage-related genes from hWJSCs cultured with basal medium,when compared to hACs isolated from osteoarthritic joints. Moreover, thepresence of sulfated proteoglycans and collagen type II is observed on bothtypes of cell cultures. We believe that this effect is due to either the electrospunnanofibers topography or the intrinsic chondrogenic differentiation potential ofhWJSCs. Therefore, we propose the electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds incombination with hWJSCs as a viable alternative to the commercial membranesused in autologous chondrogenic regeneration approaches.