Molecular, Cellular, and Tissue Engineering Commons^™

The Development Of A Novel Cartilage Analog Scaffold For Chondral Regeneration, Vishal Thomas

All Dissertations

Focal Chondral Defects (FCDs) are cartilage injuries that affect about 900,000 Americans every year. Left untreated, these may lead to osteoarthritis and eventually necessitate painful knee replacements. Current treatment options are limited in terms of durability, cost, and availability of grafts. Tissue engineering, using natural scaffolds, are a highly attractive alternative promising cost efficiency, abundance, and long-term benefits. However, their low mechanical strength and dense matrices are impediments that could lead to sub-optimal repair.

In this work, a natural biomaterial, the bovine nucleus pulposus (bNP), derived from intervertebral disc tissue, was identified as a candidate scaffold for cartilage regeneration. Mechanical …

Editorial: Intervertebral Disc Degeneration And Osteoarthritis: Mechanisms Of Disease And Functional Repair., Graciosa Q Teixeira, Jana Riegger, Raquel M Gonçalves, Makarand V. Risbud

Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

Growth Plate Cartilage: Understanding The Contribution Of Adhesion To Column Formation And Matrix Structure, Sydney E. Greer

Theses & Dissertations

Throughout fetal and adolescent development, bone growth is regulated by fine-tuned and controlled maturation of chondrocytes through a cartilaginous template called the growth plate. Bone growth rate is controlled through cell enlargement and extracellular matrix deposition, while the polarized arrangement of proliferative chondrocytes into columns aligned with the long axis of the bone potentiate growth. Chondrocytes are surrounded by a complex three-dimensional arrangement of matrix molecules, all of which are secreted by chondrocytes and assembled/remodeled to support the biological functions of the cell. Adhesion receptors found on the cell membrane of chondrocytes are crucial to the organization of matrix proteins …

Mesenchymal Stromal Cell And Chondrocyte Mobility In 3d Bioprinted Hydrogel Constructs, Alesia Lokshina

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive cartilage degeneration disease with a complex pathologic mechanism. Although OA has devastating effects on patient quality of life and places a significant burden on the healthcare system, no disease-modifying drugs have been found, and surgical treatment options are often unsustainable. 3D bioprinting is a novel field within tissue engineering that focuses on developing biocompatible constructs that can be implanted to replace an organ or tissue. Such constructs have a great potential to become treatments for OA. Understanding cell mobility within hydrogels could play a vital role in advancing the development of biocompatible constructs. However, due …

Using A Lubricin Reporter Cell To Test Current Vs. Optimized Media Compositions, Sean M. Kennedy

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Osteoarthritis is a joint disease characterized by the breakdown of articular cartilage. The field of tissue engineering is interested in developing methods to produce biological alternatives to current orthopedic procedures. Lubricin is a molecule which is important in the proper lubrication of articular cartilage. It is a challenge in the field of tissue engineering to produce cartilage with sufficient lubricin expression. Developing a reporter cell for lubricin allowed for a more efficient investigation of the conditions wh­­­ich may influence its expression. By comparing "optimized" and traditional media solutions, it was determined that the use of a previously reported type II …

Decellularization Of Porcine Cartilage Promotes Chondrogenic Differentiation Of Human Chondrocytes, Roxanne Nicole Stone

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Knee osteoarthritis (knee OA) is the most common type of osteoarthritis (OA) and accounts for 70% of arthritis-related hospital admissions and 23% of clinical visits. Major limitations in both the current non-surgical and surgical methods are that they only relieve pain and show no evidence for restoring natural tissue anatomy. Leaders in the field propose that a stem cell treatment approach holds promise for the regeneration of a greater proportion of hyaline-like tissue at the repair site. (Cross et al., 2014; Escobar Ivirico, Bhattacharjee, Kuyinu, Nair, & Laurencin, 2017; Helmick et al., 2008; Toh, Foldager, Pei, & Hui, 2014).

It …

Alginate Hydrogels As Three-Dimensional Scaffolds For In Vitro Culture Models Of Growth Plate Cartilage Development And Porcine Embryo Elongation, Taylor D. Laughlin

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The establishment of in vitro culture models utilizes tissue engineering principles to design functional mimics of in vivo environments in vitro. Advantages for the use of in vitro culture models include ethical alleviation of animal models for therapeutic testing, cost efficiency, and a greater ability to study specific mechanisms via a systematic, ground-up approach to development. In this thesis, alginate hydrogels are utilized in the development of in vitro culture models of porcine embryo elongation and growth plate cartilage development. First, the effect of scaffold and modifications to the scaffold were explored in both projects. In order to modulate …

Membrane Channel Gene Expression In Human Costal And Articular Chondrocytes, A. Asmar, R. Barrett-Jolley, A. Werner, R. Kelly Jr., M. Stacey

Bioelectrics Publications

Chondrocytes are the uniquely resident cells found in all types of cartilage and key to their function is the ability to respond to mechanical loads with changes of metabolic activity. This mechanotransduction property is, in part, mediated through the activity of a range of expressed transmembrane channels; ion channels, gap junction proteins, and porins. Appropriate expression of ion channels has been shown essential for production of extracellular matrix and differential expression of transmembrane channels is correlated to musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoarthritis and Albers-Sch€onberg. In this study we analyzed the consistency of gene expression between channelomes of chondrocytes from human …

Monitoring The Progression Of Spontaneous Articular Cartilage Healing With Infrared Spectroscopy, Megan P. O'Brien, Madhuri Penmatsa, Uday Palukuru, Paul West, Xu Yang, Mathias P. G. Bostrom, Theresa Freeman, Nancy Pleshko

Publications and Research

Objective. Evaluation of early compositional changes in healing articular cartilage is critical for understanding tissue repair and for therapeutic decision-making. Fourier transform infrared imaging spectroscopy (FT-IRIS) can be used to assess the molecular composition of harvested repair tissue. Furthermore, use of an infrared fiber-optic probe (IFOP) has the potential for translation to a clinical setting to provide molecular information in situ. In the current study, we determined the feasibility of IFOP assessment of cartilage repair tissue in a rabbit model, and assessed correlations with gold-standard histology.

Design. Bilateral osteochondral defects were generated in mature white New Zealand rabbits, and …

Matrix Remodeling Accompanies In Vitro Articular Cartilage Spherical Shaping, Nathan Thomas Balcom

Master's Theses

Introduction: Articular cartilage (AC) is a low friction load bearing material found in synovial joints. The natural repair of damaged tissue is difficult and often requires surgical intervention. With large defects it becomes necessary to match the original tissue geometry. We hypothesized that localized collagen (COL) and/or proteoglycan (PG) remodeling occurs during AC spherical reshaping. The objective of this study was to determine the presence, magnitude and depth dependence of COL and PG remodeling that accompanies AC reshaping. Methods: Full thickness AC blocks (7x7 mm² surface area) were harvested from the ridges of the patellofemoral groove of immature (1-3 …

Stem Cell Based Tissue Engineering And Regenerative Medicine: A Review Focusing On Adult Stem Cells, Jordan Greenberg, Veronica R. Fortino, Daniel Pelaez, Herman S. Cheung

Biology Faculty Articles

Tissue engineering has emerged as a field that attempts to harness the bodies' own developmental and repair features to treat diseases and illnesses. Many of these illnesses are caused by necrosis or loss of functionality of complete organs or specific cell types. Early discoveries in embryonic stem cells fueled a wave of research that led to claims about possibly regenerating nonfunctioning organs. Although we are still far away from being able to grow functional organs in a Petri dish, the field continues to progress forward, and new clinical trials have been approved for using both embryonic and adult stem cell …

Viscoelastic Anisotropic Finite Element Mixture Model Of Articular Cartilage Using Viscoelastic Collagen Fibers And Validation With Stress Relaxation Data, Matthew Alexander Griebel

Master's Theses

Experimental results show that collagen fibers exhibit stress relaxation under tension and a highly anisotropic distribution. To further develop the earlier model of Stender [1], the collagen constituent was updated to reflect its intrinsic viscoelasticity and anisotropic distribution, and integrated with an existing mixture model with glycosaminoglycans and ground substance matrix. A two-term Prony series expansion of the quasi-linear viscoelastic model was chosen to model the viscoelastic properties of the collagen fibers. Material parameters were determined by using the simplex method to minimize the sum of squared errors between model results and experimental stress relaxation data of tissue in tension. …

Nano-Mechanics Of Cartilage Glycosaminoglycans Using Molecular Dynamics Methods, Kevin Neil Hendrickson

Master's Theses

Articular Cartilage (AC) is the main load carrying material in synovial joints {Hamerman, 1962} and degeneration of AC can cause pain in the form of arthritis. Current work is centered on the method of replacing damaged cartilage inside the body (in vivo) with tissue engineered outside the body (ex vivo) {Temenoff, 2000}. In order to engineer tissue ex vivo similar to the native tissue in structure and function there must be a comprehensive understanding of the mechanical properties of AC. This work focuses on the study of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), a molecule known to be primarily responsible for the compressive stiffness …