15502-m-pleumeekers

Figure 7. Paracrine effect of h AMSCs and h BMSCs on b ACs. (A) Schematic overview. In purple: h MSCs ; in green: b ACs. (B) The DNA and sGAG content of b ACs in the presence of paracrine factors of h MSCs via Transwell® system or h MSC-conditioned medium. The DNA content after 3 weeks of culture was compared to the initial DNA content prior to cell-culture (dotted line). (C) Co-culture in alginate constructs and pellet culture, allowing direct cell-cell contact. (D) Relative gene-expression analysis, 3 weeks after culture in alginate. *, ** or *** indicates p -values smaller than 0.05, 0.01 or 0.001 respectively compared to the amount of DNA prior to cell culture. # indicates significant differences from all conditions ( p <0.01). Data are shown as box-whisker plots of 6 samples of one experiment. For statistical evaluation, a Kruskal-Wallis followed by the Mann-Whitney-U test was use followed by a Bonferroni's post-hoc comparisons test. TW = Transwell ; CM = Conditioned Medium ; h AMSC = human Adipose-tissue-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cell ; h BMSC = human Bone-marrow-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cell ; b AC = bovine Articular Chondrocyte. 101 AMSCs OR BMSCs FULFILL A TROPHIC ROLE IN CO-CULTURE 5