Optimization of Media to Enhance the Growth of Tissue Engineered Cartilage

Unlike other self-repairing tissues, cartilage has a very low regenerative capacity, thus, giving reason to examine different approaches to potential reparative therapies such as tissue engineering. Although once chondrocytes are placed in vitro they start to synthesize less cartilaginous extracellular matrix (ECM). A promising method used to upregulate the synthesis of ECM constituents is new media formulations. Thus, the objective of this study was to explore different media formulations to upregulate the accumulation of cartilaginous extracellular matrix (specifically, proteoglycans and collagen) by providing the cells with different availability of nutrients (e.g. glucose, glutamine) as well as examining the influence of different basal media formulations. The accumulation of GAG and collagen had two different media formulations which showed a significant increase in upregulation of each constituent in the ECM; highlighting the importance of having new media formulations specifically geared to each constituent.