TISSUE CULTURE RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

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We provide various lots of synoviocytes prepared from remnant synovial tissues obtained from surgical procedures performed on Japanese osteo arthritis (OA) or rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. In this paper, we examined chondrogenic potentials of the synoviocytes to investigate possibility of their research use as mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). Synoviocytes from OA or RA patients were cultured in chondrogenic differentiation medium on round bottom culture plates. After differentiation, spheroids derived from OA synoviocytes were approximately 1.3 mm in diameter, and the expressions of chondrogenic markers, i.e., aggrecan, collagen type II, and SOX9 mRNA, all increased in these spheroids. Moreover, the production of collagen type II protein was recognized. On the other hand, most of the spheroids derived from RA synoviocytes increased in diameter, and showed the expressions of chondrogenic markers as with the case of OA synoviocytes.

However, some spheroids derived from RA synoviocytes were less than 1 mm in diameter, no collagen type II expressions were detected, and SOX9 mRNA expressions did not increase in these spheroids. These results indicate that synoviocytes from OA patients have stable chondrogenic potentials whereas the chondrogenic potentials of synoviocytes from RA patients vary from specimen to specimen, thus suggesting that the prepared synoviocytes are useful as MSC for chondrogenic differentiation research.

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