CO-CULTURE-BASED LIGAMENT-TO-BONE INTERFACE TISSUE ENGINEERING USING BONE MARROW DERIVED STEM CELLS

Abstract

Ligament-bone interface is a multi-phasic structure comprising of ligament, fibrocartilage and bone. The fibrocartilage is the transitional zone to facilitate the smooth transfer of force between soft and hard tissue. Ligament grafts are often lack of this interface, resulting in poor integration into the bone. The project aimed to develop a bone-ligament-bone graft with a native-like fibrocartilagious interface. We hypothesized that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) co-cultured between ligament fibroblasts and bone osteoblasts would enable transmission of chondrogenic factors from bone/ligament cells to BMSCs, resulting in their differentiation into fibrocartilagious intermediate stage. Based on the hypothesis, BMSCs, fibroblasts and osteoblasts were harvested and the tri-lineage co-culture system (fibroblasts-BMSCs-osteoblasts) was applied on fabricated multi-segmental silk scaffolds to construct the desired graft. In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrated the fibrocartilagious differentiation of BMSCs in the co-culture system and suggested the potential application of constructed graft in ligament-bone interface tissue engineering.