title: Scaffold-free cartilage by rotational culture for tissue engineering.
abstract: Our objective was to investigate the hypothesis that tissue-engineered cartilage with promising biochemical, mechanical properties can be formed by loading mechanical stress under existing cell-cell interactions analogous to those that occur in condensation during embryonic development. By loading dedifferentiated chondrocytes with mechanical stress under existing cell-cell interactions, we could first form a scaffold-free cartilage tissue with arbitrary shapes and a large size with promising biological, mechanical properties. The cartilage tissue which constituted of chondrocytes and ECM produced by inoculated dedifferentiated chondrocytes to a high porous simple mold has arbitrary shapes, and did not need any biodegradable scaffold to control the shape. In contrast, scaffold-free cartilage tissue cultured under static conditions could not keep their shapes; it was fragile tissue. The possibility of scaffold-free organ design was suggested because the cartilage tissue increases steadily in size with culture time; indeed, the growth of cartilage tissue starting from an arbitrary shape might be predictable by mathematical expression. For tissue-engineered cartilage formation with arbitrary shapes, biochemical and mechanical properties, loading dedifferentiated chondrocytes with mechanical stress under existing cell-cell interactions has prominent effects. Therefore, our scaffold-free cartilage model loaded mechanical stress based on a simple mold system may be applicable for tissue-engineered cartilage.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. furukawa@bioeng.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
authors.forename: Katsuko S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Furukawa
authors.forename: Katsuaki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Imura
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tateishi
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ushida
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019149:Bioreactors; D002356:Cartilage / Q000166:cytology / Q000254:growth & development*; D002417:Cattle; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D019902:Chondrocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D020219:Chondrogenesis / Q000502:physiology*; D040542:Mechanotransduction, Cellular / Q000502:physiology*; D009924:Organ Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D012399:Rotation; D033081:Shear Strength; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*