Abstract—Tissue engineering approach for cartilage regeneration has clinically been conducted using chondrocytes with collagen gel scaffold. However, such engineered cartilage tissue cannot be implanted into the load-bearing part of joint surface because of poor mechanical properties that are much lower than those of natural cartilage tissue. The aim of this research project is, therefore, to develop a novel engineered cartilage tissue that has mechanical properties comparable with natural articular tissue. As a new novel scaffold for cartilage regeneration, collagen gel/sponge composite scaffold was developed by placing sponge structure in gel phase. It was found that the composite scaffold has much better compressive mechanical properties than pure collagen gel. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were also cultured with a standard cell growth medium, and nicely proliferated in the scaffold. Next, combined culture condition such as the condition: chondrogenic differentiation and growth mediums, were examined. It was found that conditions can effectively activate the proliferation and differentiation of MSCs, resulting in increase of compressive property. As the next step, Improvement of the structure of the composite scaffold were examined. Many chondrocyte-like spherical cells and many collagen fibrils were observed on the surface of the samples.

Index Terms—Tissue engineering, mesenchymal stem cell, composite material, biopolymer.

Yusuke Nakamuta is with Kyushu University, 6-1 Kasuga-Koen, Kasuga, Japan.
Mitsugu Todo is with Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, 6-1 Kasuga-Koen, Kasuga (email: todo@riam.kyushu-u.ac.jp).
Takaaki Arahira is with Fukuoka Dental College, 2-15-1 Tamura, Sawara-ku, Fukuoka.

Cite: Yusuke Nakamuta, Mitsugu Todo, Takaaki Arahira, "Improvement of Collagen Gel/Sponge Composite Scaffold by Gel Wrapping for Cartilage Tissue Engineering," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 102-109, 2017.