Articular cartilage is an avascular and flexible connective tissue found in joints. It produces a cushioning effect at the joints and provides low friction to protect the ends of the bones from wear and tear/damage. It has poor repair capacity and any injury can result pain and loss of mobility. Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β), a cytokine superfamily, regulates cell function, including differentiation and proliferation. Although the function of the TGF-βs in various cell types has been investigated, their function in cartilage repair is as yet not fully understood. The effect of TGF-β3 in biological regulation of primary chondrocyte was investigated in this work. TGF-β3 provided fibroblastic morphology to chondrocytes and therefore overall reduction in cell proliferation was observed. The length of the cells supplemented with TGF-β3 were larger than the cells without TGF-β3 treatment. This was caused by the fibroblast like cells (dedifferentiated chondrocytes) which occupied larger areas compared to cells without TGF-β3 addition. The healing process of the model wound closure assay of chondrocyte multilayer was slowed down by TGF-β3, and this cytokine negatively affected the strength of chondrocyte adhesion to the cell culture surface.
Growing three dimensional (3D) cells is an emerging research in tissue engineering. Biophysical properties of the 3D cells regulate the cells growth, drug diffusion dynamics and gene expressions. Scaffold based or scaffoldless techniques for 3D cell cultures are rarely being compared in terms of the physical features of the microtissues produced. The biophysical properties of the microtissues cultured using scaffold based microencapsulation by flicking and scaffoldless liquid crystal (LC) based techniques were characterized. Flicking technique produced high yield and highly reproducible microtissues of keratinocyte cell lines in alginate microcapsules at approximately 350 ± 12 pieces per culture. However, microtissues grown on the LC substrates yielded at lower quantity of 58 ± 21 pieces per culture. The sizes of the microtissues produced using alginate microcapsules and LC substrates were 250 ± 25 μm and 141 ± 70 μm, respectively. In both techniques, cells remodeled into microtissues via different growth phases and showed good integrity of cells in field-emission scanning microscopy (FE-SEM). Microencapsulation packed the cells in alginate scaffolds of polysaccharides with limited spaces for motility. Whereas, LC substrates allowed the cells to migrate and self-stacking into multilayered structures as revealed by the nuclei stainings. The cells cultured using both techniques were found viable based on the live and dead cell stainings. Stained histological sections showed that both techniques produced cell models that closely replicate the intrinsic physiological conditions. Alginate microcapsulation and LC based techniques produced microtissues containing similar bio-macromolecules but they did not alter the main absorption bands of microtissues as revealed by the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Cell growth, structural organization, morphology and surface structures for 3D microtissues cultured using both techniques appeared to be different and might be suitable for different applications.