1. Enhanced treatment of articular cartilage defect of the knee by intra-articular injection of Bcl-xL-engineered mesenchymal stem cells in rabbit model
- Author
-
Bin Hu, Qin Ma, Jun-Lin Ren, Tianqiu Mao, Yanpu Liu, and Junrui Zhang
- Subjects
Cartilage, Articular ,Cell Survival ,Cellular differentiation ,Blotting, Western ,Green Fluorescent Proteins ,bcl-X Protein ,Biomedical Engineering ,Medicine (miscellaneous) ,Apoptosis ,Mesenchymal Stem Cell Transplantation ,Transfection ,Injections, Intra-Articular ,Biomaterials ,Cell therapy ,Tissue engineering ,In Situ Nick-End Labeling ,medicine ,Animals ,Humans ,Viability assay ,Stem cell transplantation for articular cartilage repair ,Wound Healing ,Tissue Engineering ,business.industry ,Cartilage ,Mesenchymal stem cell ,Cell Differentiation ,Mesenchymal Stem Cells ,Genetic Therapy ,Flow Cytometry ,Culture Media ,Hindlimb ,Disease Models, Animal ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Cytoprotection ,Cancer research ,Rabbits ,Wound healing ,business ,Biomedical engineering - Abstract
Direct intra-articular injection of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been proposed as a potential cell therapy for cartilage defects. This cell therapy relies on the survival of the implanted MSCs. However, the arduous local environment may limit cell viability after implantation, which would restrict the cells' regenerative capacity. Thus, it is necessary to reinforce the implanted cells against the unfavourable microenvironment in order to improve the efficacy of cell therapy. We examined whether the transduction of an anti-apoptotic protein, Bcl-xL, into MSCs could prevent cell death and improve the implantation efficiency of MSCs in a rabbit model. Our current findings demonstrate that the group treated with Bcl-xL-engineered MSCs could improve cartilage healing both morphologically and histologically when compared with the controls. These results suggest that intra-articular injection of Bcl-xL-engineered MSCs is a potential non-invasive therapeutic method for effectively treating cartilage defects of the knee.
- Published
- 2010