S. Miyata, K. Furukawa, T. Ushida, and T. Tateishi (Japan)
Tissue engineering, articular cartilage, chondrocyte, mechanical property, dynamic visco-elasticity
Recently, an approach to restore cartilage defects, culturing autologous chondrocytes to create a three dimensional tissue, has been developed. In this kind of approach, it is important to study whether the extracellular matrices synthesized by cultured chondrocytes have dynamic mechanical properties unique to articular cartilage. In this study, we evaluated in detail dynamic visco-elastic properties of chondrocyte/agarose constructs in compression and shear directions, and compared those properties with biochemical composition. As the results, the dynamic modulus of the constructs increased over the culture time. Furthermore, a regression analysis showed that the sulfated glycosaminoglycan (sGAG) content is correlated strongly with dynamic stiffness in both compression and shear deformation. On the other hand, loss tangent, which represents an energy dissipation capability of the constructs, showed little correlation with sGAG content.
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