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Cartilaginous lesions are a significant public health problem and the use of adult stem cells represents a promising therapy for this condition. Cryopreservation confers many advantages for practitioners engaged in cell-based therapies. However, conventional slow freezing has always been associated with damage and mortality due to intracellular ice formation, cryoprotectant toxicity, and dehydration. The aim of this work is to observe the effect of the usual Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) cryopreservation process on the architecture of the collagen fiber network of chondrogenic cells from mesenchymal stem cells by Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy. To perform this study we used Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) derived from adipose tissue which presents the capacity to differentiate into other lineages such as osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages. Mesenchymal stem cells obtained after liposuction were isolated digested by collagenase type I and characterization was carried out by differentiation of mesodermic lineages, and flow cytometry using specific markers. The isolated MSCs were cryopreserved by the DMSO technique and the chondrogenic differentiation was carried out using the micromass technique. We then compared the cryopreserved vs non-cryopreserved collagen fibers which are naturally formed during the differentiation process. We observed that noncryopreserved MSCs presented a directional trend in the collagen fibers formed which was absent in the cryopreserved MSCs. We confirmed this trend quantitatively by the aspect ratio obtained by Fast Fourier Transform which was 0.76 for cryopreserved and 0.52 for non-cryopreserved MSCs, a statistical significant difference.

Articular cartilage injury remains one of the major concerns in orthopedic surgery. Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation has been introduced to avoid some of the side effects and complications of current techniques.. With the aim to evaluate chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells, we used Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy to analyze the aggregation and orientation of collagen fibrils in the hyaline cartilage of rabbit knees. The experiment was performed using implants with type II collagen hydrogel (a biomaterial that mimics the microenvironment of the cartilage), one implant containing MSC and one other without MSC (control). After 10 weeks, the rabbit knees were dissected and fibril collagen distribution and spatial organization in the extracellular matrix of the lesions were verified by SHG. The result showed significant differences, whereas in histological sections of the cartilaginous lesions with MSC the collagen fibers are organized and regular; in the control sections the collagen fibers are more irregular, with absence of cells. A macroscopic analysis of the lesions confirmed this difference, showing a greater percentage of lesions filling in knees treated with MSC than in the knees used as controls. This study demonstrates that SHG microscopy will be an excellent tool to help in the evaluation of the effectiveness of MSC-based cell therapy for cartilage repair.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) is a genetic disorder that leads to bone fractures due to mutations in the Col1A1 or Col1A2 genes that affect the primary structure of the collagen I chain with the ultimate outcome in collagen I fibrils that are either reduced in quantity or abnormally organized in the whole body. A quick test screening of the patients would largely reduce the sample number to be studied by the time consuming molecular genetics techniques. For this reason an assessment of the human skin collagen structure by Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) can be used as a screening technique to speed up the correlation of genetics/phenotype/OI types understanding. In the present work we have used quantitative second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging microscopy to investigate the collagen matrix organization of the OI human skin samples comparing with normal control patients. By comparing fibril collagen distribution and spatial organization, we calculated the anisotropy and texture patterns of this structural protein. The analysis of the anisotropy was performed by means of the two-dimensional Discrete Fourier Transform and image pattern analysis with Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). From these results, we show that statistically different results are obtained for the normal and disease states of OI.

We applied Two-photon Excited Fluorescence (TPEF), Second/Third Harmonic Generation (SHG and THG) and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM) Non Linear Optics (NLO) Laser-Scanning Microscopy within the same imaging platform to evaluate their use as a diagnostic tool in ovarian tumors. We assess of applicability of this multimodal approach to perform a pathological evaluation of serous and mucinous tumors in human samples. The combination of TPEF-SHG-THG imaging provided complementary information about the interface epithelium/stromal, such as the transformation of epithelium surface (THG) and the overall fibrillar tissue architecture (SHG). The fact that H&E staining is the standard method used in clinical pathology and that the stored samples are usually fixed makes it important a re-evaluation of these samples with NLO microscopy to compare new results with a library of already existing samples. FLIM, however, depends on the chemical environment around the fluorophors that was completely changed after fixation; therefore it only makes sense in unstained samples. Our FLIM results in unstained samples demonstrate that it is possible to discriminate healthy epithelia from serous or mucinous epithelia. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the different imaging modalities used showed that multimodal nonlinear microscopy has the potential to differentiate between cancerous and healthy ovarian tissue.

In this work we proposed and built a multimodal optical setup that extends a commercially available confocal microscope (Olympus FV300) to include nonlinear optical (NLO) microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). The NLO microscopies included two-photon fluorescence (TPFE), Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) and Third Harmonic Generation (THG). The whole system, including FLIM, used only one laser source composed of an 80 MHz femtosecond laser. The commercial Ti:sapphire lasers can be tuned up to 690-1040 nm bringing the THG signal to the 350 nm region where most microscope optics do not work. However, the third harmonic is only generated at the sample, meaning that we only have to take care of the collection optics. To do that we used a remote photomultiplier to acquire the THG signal at the 310-350 nm wavelength window. After performing the tests to guarantee that we are observing actually SHG/THG signals we than used this system to acquire multimodal images of several biological samples, from epithelial cancer to vegetables. The ability to see the collagen network together with the cell nuclei proved to be important for cancer tissues diagnosis. Moreover, FLIM provides information about the cell metabolism, also very important for cancer cell processes.