Topic: Living Hyaline Cartilage Graft (LhCG) for Cartilage Repair and Anti-Arthritis Drug Evaluation

Speaker: Professor Dongan Wang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Time: 10:00 a.m., April 19, 2016

Venue: Conference Room 410, Building B12, SCUT South Campus

Abstract:

In this study, we have developed a continuous methodology to directly set up a scaffold-free macro-scaled three-dimensional (3D) living hyaline cartilage graft (LhCG) with the aid of a biomaterial-based interim scaffolding system. The practical performance of LhCG is evaluated in the knees of minipig model with full-thickness chondral defects for 6 months. Hyaline cartilage based neo-tissue fulfills the desired in situ reconstruction. LhCG is also employed as an engineered biomimetic/pathological tissue platform for anti-arthritis drug evaluation in vitro. Osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease models are created with LhCG by replicating the inflammatory environment of an OA/RA joint via co-culturing LhCG with lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated macrophages as well as inflammatory synovial fibroblasts, after which the accuracy of this model for in vitro drug-testing was validated using a popularly applied nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) – Celecoxib®. The results suggest that this new OA/RA model is able to adequately mimic the native OA/RA cartilage and is suitable to be used as an in vitro model for predicting native cartilage response to drug treatment.