Engineering Tissues That Mimic the Zonal Nature of Articular Cartilage Using Decellularized Cartilage Explants Seeded with Adult Stem Cells.

Articular cartilage (AC) possesses uniquely complex mechanical properties; for example its stiffness increases with depth through the tissue and it softens when compressed. These properties are integral to the function of AC and can be attributed to the tissue's collagen network and how it interacts with negatively charged proteoglycans. In this study, scaffolds containing arrays of channels were produced from decellularized AC explants derived from skeletally immature and mature pigs.