Generation of bone-cartilage interface in microfluidic system

Bone-cartilage interface is one of the most affected areas in bone and cartilage disorders. In this regard, tissue engineering approaches have been extensively utilized to regenerate the damaged skeletal tissues. Despite the significant progress in clinics, there is still unmet need for in vitro osteo-chondral models to study the mechanisms of these diseases. In their native environments, cells are spatially organized within complex structures known as the extracellular matrix. Current in vitro 2D culture platforms have limited capacity to recapitulate physiological clues. Bioengineered systems with 3D cell culture potential provide new venues for generating in vitro disease models. Microfluidic systems enable scientists to mimic native niche of organ and tissues in microscale. Such engineered systems are perfect platforms to examine the natural responses of the tissues, like their native microenvironments. Some of advantages using tissue and organ models as, i) minimizing the number of animals used in research, ii) identification novel therapeutics, iii) defining the drug administration techniques. This study, aims to generate a novel in vitro disease model for bone-cartilage defects by combining 3D cell culture systems with stem cell technologies. Here, we design a microfluidic system that allows for the direct differentiation of ADMSCs in hydrogel-based 3D micro environment. The capacity of the novel microfluidic system provides simultaneous formation of osteogenic and chondrogenic tissues in the same microenvironment.