Bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cell (BM MSC) application in articular cartilage repair

Abstract

Cartilage injuries are one of the major causes of disabilities in the world, resulting in substantial morbidity at a high cost for the society. Recently, stem cell therapy has become one of the promising modalities in treatment of cartilage injuries. In this dissertation I visualized the intra-articular injected SPIO labeled mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) engraftment to the injured cartilage by in vivo monitoring of the cells by MRI, which leaded to hyaline-like cartilage repair. MSCs homing and engraftment was an active migration due to the up-regulation of the chemo-attractant factors secreted by the injured cartilage, which was evaluated by developing a microfluidic platform to simulate the in vivo environment. Finally, the clinical outcome evaluation of cartilage injuries treatment showed similar results of using stem cells or chondrocytes implantation (ACI as the current standard method), which confirmed that MSC is a very promising cell source for cartilage repair.