An in vitro model to assess mechanisms and efficacy of a cellular conduit for treatment of avascular meniscal injuries

Abstract

Tears in the avascular portion of the knee meniscus are commonplace and are frequently incapable of healing spontaneously. Delivery of synovial cells from the meniscal periphery to avascular injuries can result in an effective healing response but is difficult to accomplish surgically. This report describes the development of a novel in vitro model comprised of three-dimensionally cultured cells in agarose used to assess the proof of concept that a cellular conduit device could be used to facilitate the delivery of synovial fibroblasts from a cell source to a remote acellular recipient site. The results indicate that synovial fibroblasts are capable of migrating through a cellular conduit more optimally than a created trephined channel over a clinically relevant distance in response to a chemotactic gradient. This model proved to be a reliable way to assess fibroblast-like synoviocyte migration in a clinically relevant fashion for application to avascular meniscal tear healing methodologies, and provided mechanistic information regarding the successful in vivo testing of this specific biomedical device.

Effects of Different Cell-Detaching Methods on the Viability and Cell Surface Antigen Expression of Synovial Mesenchymal Stem Cells

“…In addition, the synovial membrane is considered to include multipotent cells that contribute to tissue regeneration after injury 3 . It is reported that cells migrate from the synovial membrane after meniscal injury to regenerate the damaged tissue 8,9 .…”

Effect of media mixing on ECM assembly and mechanical properties of anatomically-shaped tissue engineered meniscus

“…Current meniscal TE efforts have focused on the repair of focal defects through the use of stem cells [5, 6] and scaffold materials [7, 8]. There have also been efforts to characterize the behavior of meniscal fibrochondrocytes and how these cells generate extracellular matrix (ECM) in scaffolds with simple geometry, including agarose [9], alginate [10], chitosan-graft-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) [11], ploy (ε-caprolactone) [12], polyglycolic acid (PGA) [9], polyethylene terephthalate [13], and poly(L -lactic acid) [14].…”

Cell-based Meniscal Tissue Engineering: A Case for Synoviocytes

“…Other reports, however, document the deformation and subsequent closure of trephination holes resulting from meniscal viscoelasticity resulting in inconsistent neovascularization [40]. Recently, synthetic conduits implanted within fashioned trephinations were assessed in both animal and in vitro models, which demonstrated optimized maintenance of the channel diameter, thus facilitating neovascularization and conduction of synoviocytes more optimally than with the presence of a trephine alone [18,33].…”