Intra-individual comparison of human nasal chondrocytes and debrided knee chondrocytes: Relevance for engineering autologous cartilage grafts

OBJECTIVE Implantation of autologous chondrocytes for cartilage repair requires harvesting of undamaged cartilage, implying an additional joint arthroscopy surgery and further damage to the articular surface. As alternative possible cell sources, in this study we assessed the proliferation and chondrogenic capacity of debrided Knee Chondrocytes (dKC) and Nasal Chondrocytes (NC) collected from the same patients. METHODS Matched NC and dKC pairs from 13 patients enrolled in two clinical studies (NCT01605201 and NCT026739059) were expanded in monolayer and then chondro-differentiated in 3D collagenous scaffolds in medium with or without Transforming Growth Factor beta 1 (TGFβ1). Cell proliferation and amount of cartilage matrix production by these two cell types were assessed. RESULTS dKC exhibited an inferior proliferation rate than NC, and a lower capacity to chondro-differentiate. Resulting dKC-grafts contained lower amounts of cartilage specific matrix components glycosaminoglycans and type II collagen. The cartilage forming capacity of dKC did not significantly correlate with specific clinical parameters and was only partially improved by medium supplemention with TGFβ1. CONCLUSIONS dKC exhibit a reproducibly poor capacity to engineer cartilage grafts. Our in vitro data suggest that NC would be a better suitable cell source for the generation of autologous cartilage grafts.