Scaffold‐free cartilage tissue engineering with a small population of human nasoseptal chondrocytes

Abstract

NA. Laryngoscope, 127:E91-E99, 2017.

Age‐related histologic and biochemical changes in auricular and septal cartilage

“…9 Recently, Chiu et al showed decreasing GAG content in both native and engineered septal cartilage from donors under age 65. 23 Our findings are consistent with these prior studies on septal cartilage, demonstrating that the age-related decrease in GAGs seen in younger patients continues into old age. In addition, we showed that a similar but slower age-related loss of GAGs occurs in auricular cartilage.…”

“…Lee et al found similar reductions in GAG content using a histologic grading scale to analyze septal cartilage from younger donors . Recently, Chiu et al showed decreasing GAG content in both native and engineered septal cartilage from donors under age 65 . Our findings are consistent with these prior studies on septal cartilage, demonstrating that the age‐related decrease in GAGs seen in younger patients continues into old age.…”

Toward tissue-engineering of nasal cartilages

“…The choice of stimulus is equally as important as the cell type used. Culture supplementation with GDF-5 and IGF-I, as well as bFGF and TGF-β2 was shown to increase the histological staining intensity of GAG and type II collagen content in scaffold-free human nasal chondrocyte-derived neocartilage [89,106,117]. The use of IGF-I and GDF-5 increased the thickness of engineered neocartilage 12-fold over the untreated control [106] in scaffold-free nasal neocartilage engineered from human septal chondrocytes.…”

“…As a hyaline cartilage, septal cartilage expectedly shows abundant immunohistochemical staining of collagen II, particularly in the central zone compared to the superficial zone, and little staining for collagen I [87]. Septal cartilage also contains small amounts of collagen IX, X, and XI [29,87,89,90]. LLC also shows abundant immunohistochemical staining for collagen II and little staining for collagen I [87].…”

“…This usage is likely due to the availability of septal remnants from rhinoplasty surgeries. Low-passage (up to P3) human nasal septal chondrocytes have shown the capability to produce neocartilage containing GAG and type II collagen [89,90,99,[105][106][107]. It has also been suggested that the superficial zone of septal cartilage contains a promising population of nasoseptal progenitor cells (NSPs) [108].…”