Establishment of efficient culture systems for somatic stem cells and evaluations of their potentials for articular cartilage disorders

自体软骨细胞移植是修复退变关节软骨的成熟技术。然而，由于软骨细胞在体外培养后衰老等特性的限制，干细胞在一些疾病的治疗方面的应用受到了渴望和检验。本研究旨在建立高效的干细胞采集和扩增方法，并观察其作为关节软骨疾病细胞治疗材料的特性。作为这项研究的重要结果之一，已经阐明了降低培养液中的血清浓度和添加生长因子显著促进了干细胞的自我更新。此外，这项技术也被证明是从诱导的多能干细胞中诱导出具有向软骨细胞分化潜能的间充质祖细胞的有效方法。

Autologous chondrocyte implantation is an established technique for the repair of degenerated articular cartilage. However, because of limited properties of the chondrocyte such as senescence after in vitro propagation, application of stem cells are aspired and examined for therapies of some diseases actually. This study aimed to establish efficient method for collection and propagation of the stem cells, and to observe the properties of them as the materials for cell therapy for articular cartilage disorders. As one important result of this study, it has been elucidated that reducing serum concentration in the medium and addition of growth factors is significantly improve the stem cell self-renewal. Furthermore, it has also been demonstrated that this technique could be diverted to the efficient method for induction of mesenchymal progenitor cells, which possess a potential to differentiate to the chondrocytes, from induced pluripotent stem cells.