Effects of small molecules on cartilage tissue regeneration

Every year millions of people suffer from cartilage defects. Although, there are some traditional treatment strategies to heal defects, they are inadequate to repair full thickness defects and they cannot give its native mechanical endurance and function to cartilage back. Therefore, cartilage tissue engineering studies provide new treatment methods to overcome limitations of traditional methods. In this study, effects of small molecules on chondrogenic differentiation of RBMSCs were examined to evaluate their cartilage tissue regeneration potential. Three different small molecules (KGN, ADZ and SKF) were used in chondrogenic induction, RBMSCs were seeded into fibrous polylactic acid (PLA) scaffolds prepared with wet spin technique. While kartogenin (KGN) is already known in literature with its chondrogenic induction and chondroprotection properties; ADZ and SKF are recently found molecules having proliferation enhancing feature on MSCs, but their potential effects on chondrogenic induction has been never studied. Chondrogenic differentiation effects small molecules of ADZ and SKF were examined on differentiated RBMSCs throughout 14 days of incubation compared to KGN molecule via Alcian Blue-PAS staining, MTS cell proliferation assay, RT-PCR methods. Although, ADZ had a better proliferative effects on RBMSCs, there was reduced ECM deposition during chondrogenic differentiation. Therefore, rest of the study was carried on with small molecule SKF and its combination with KGN. Alcain Blue-PAS staining, MTS assay and RT-PCR assays were conducted on stem cells. Higher amount of cartilagous ECM deposition, higher proliferation rate and higher expression of chondrogenic marker genes were observed in groups induced with small moleule SKF compared to controls. Results of the study showed that small molecule SKF had chondrogenic induction potential to use in cartilage tissue engineering.