Exploring a tissue engineering strategy as a novel approach for haemophilic arthropathy treatment

Among the most disabling complications of Haemophilia, repeated and sponta- neous intra-articular haemorrhages may cause irreversible damage to the joint. This leads to haemophilic arthropathy, a polyarticular disease characterized by joint stiff- ness, chronic pain and a severely limited range of motion. Occurrence of haemophilic arthropathy can be avoided by the prophylactic administration of clotting factors to prevent articular haemorrhages, but it can also be addressed using anti-inflammatory drugs and surgery to alleviate the effects of articular damage, up to arthroplasty as resolute option [1]. However, innovative strategies for the prevention and treatment of this common and serious complication are still required, due to some important limits of current therapies, first of all inhibitor development. In this work, we inves- tigated a tissue engineering approach to regenerate articular focal lesions in Haemo- philic patients by in vitro development of an autologous bio-hybrid prosthesis. For this purpose, we isolated articular chondrocytes from Haemophilic patients (HaeCs) and characterized them for the first time in literature, to verify whether they were altered by blood exposure. Using healthy chondrocytes as control, optical microscope morphological analysis, flow cytometry immunophenotype evaluation and gene expression study by qRT-PCR were performed. After that, an innovative compos- ite scaffold was obtained by combining decellularized Wharton’s Jelly (W’s J) from human umbilical cord with a novel biodegradable polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel [2]. Finally, we assessed HaeCs capacity to re-populate biosynthetic scaffolds by Scan- ning Electron Microscopy and MTT assay on cells seeded on supports. Taken togeth- er, our results contributed to define HaeCs phenotype, highlighting the possibility to use these cells for autologous implant. What is more, HaeCs capacity to growth and proliferate on composite scaffolds set the stage for planning the development of autologous tissue substitutes for haemophilic cartilage regeneration.
Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology, Vol. 120, No. 1 (Supplement) 2015