Question

1. You are working on tissue engineering cartilage in a bioreactor by seeding mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on a scaffold. a) What growth factor would you use to promote the MSC differentiation into chondrocytes? b) What are the advantages and disadvantages of directly injecting growth factors into the cell-seeded scaffold? c) Can you propose another approach to provide growth factors to the tissue engineering construct? What are the advantages of your proposal? d) Besides growth factors, what other regulators would you use to promote the growth of the tissue construct Al stromal Cell Derived factor X B) Advantage growth factors are soluble Disadvantage X ci Platelet Derived growth factors (PDGF) p Cytokinen

Answer 1

1). a. Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF)

b. Advantages:

• different functions on cells.
• deliverable to damaged tissue sites.
• effects on cell and protein binding sites directly and indirectly.

Disadvantages:

• clinical use is minimal.
• difficult to prepare and deliver.
• possible immunologic response.
• products are synthetically derived.
• cost of treatment is high.
• chance of rejection.

c. Growth factor interactions with natural & synthetic extracellular matrices.

Advantages

1.wide range of cell actions.

2.can control migration.

3.proliferation of subset of cells.

d. Chemokines.