Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cells from Bone Marrow Differentiate into Chondrocyte-Like Cells.

Cartilage tissue engineering has great potential for treating chondral and osteochondral injuries. Efficient seed cells are the key to cartilage tissue engineering. Multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs) have greater differentiation ability than other bone-marrow stem cells, and thus may be candidate seed cells. We attempted to differentiate MAPCs into chondrocyte-like cells to evaluate their suitability as seed cells for cartilage tissue engineering. Toluidine blue and Alcian blue staining suggested that glycosaminoglycan was expressed in differentiated cells. Immunofluorostaining indicated that differentiated human MAPCs (hMAPCs) expressed collagen II. Based on these results, we concluded that bone-marrow-derived hMAPCs could differentiate into chondrocyte-like cells in vitro.