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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biomaterials
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1495015
This article is part of the Research Topic Recent Advancements in Musculoskeletal Regenerative Medicine View all articles

Healthy but Not Osteoarthritic Human Meniscus-derived Matrix Scaffolds Promote Meniscus Repair

Provisionally accepted
Saman Firoozi Saman Firoozi 1Jon C. Ley Jon C. Ley 1Dawn A. Chasse Dawn A. Chasse 1David E. Attarian David E. Attarian 1Samuel S. Wellman Samuel S. Wellman 1Annunziato Amendola Annunziato Amendola 1Amy L. McNulty Amy L. McNulty 1,2,3*
  • 1 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
  • 2 Department of Pathology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States
  • 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Meniscus tissue is commonly injured due to sports-related injuries and age-related degeneration and approximately 50% of individuals with a meniscus tear will develop osteoarthritis (OA). Given that the meniscus has limited healing potential, new therapeutic strategies are required to enhance meniscus repair. Porcine meniscus-derived matrix (MDM) scaffolds improve meniscus integrative repair, but sources of human meniscus tissue have not been investigated. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to generate healthy and osteoarthritic (OA) MDM scaffolds and to compare meniscus cellular responses and integrative repair. Meniscus cells showed high viability on both healthy and OA scaffolds. While DNA content was higher in cell-seeded OA scaffolds than cell-seeded healthy scaffolds, CCK-8, and both sGAG and collagen content were similar between scaffold types. After 28 days in an ex vivo meniscus defect model, healthy and OA scaffolds had similar DNA, sGAG, and collagen content. However, the shear strength of repair was reduced in defects containing OA scaffolds compared to healthy scaffolds. In conclusion, healthy human allograft tissue is a more useful source for generating MDM scaffolds that can support cellular growth, ECM production, and ex vivo integrative repair of the meniscus, highlighting the potential suitability for tissue engineering approaches to improve meniscus repair.

    Keywords: Tissue Engineering, Proteoglycans, Osteoarthritis, allograft, meniscus, age, Collagen, Meniscus repair

    Received: 11 Sep 2024; Accepted: 17 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Firoozi, Ley, Chasse, Attarian, Wellman, Amendola and McNulty. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Amy L. McNulty, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.