The effect of cartilage decellularized extracellular matrix-chitosan compound on treating knee osteoarthritis in rats

Deng Chen; Yaxin Zhang; Qun Lin; Duoyun Chen; Xiaolei Li; Jihang Dai; Yu Sun

doi:10.7717/peerj.12188

The effect of cartilage decellularized extracellular matrix-chitosan compound on treating knee osteoarthritis in rats

PeerJ. 2021 Oct 12:9:e12188. doi: 10.7717/peerj.12188. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Deng Chen^#¹, Yaxin Zhang^#², Qun Lin², Duoyun Chen¹, Xiaolei Li¹, Jihang Dai¹, Yu Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Orthopedics, Northern Jiangsu People's Hospital Affiliated to Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China.
² Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Liaoning, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) refers to a common disease in orthopaedics, whereas effective treatments have been rarely developed. As indicated from existing studies, chondrocyte death, extracellular matrix degradation and subchondral bone injury are recognized as the pathological basis of KOA. The present study aimed to determine the therapeutic effect of decellularized extracellular matrix-chitosan (dECM-CS) compound on KOA. In this study, rat knee cartilage was decellularized, and a satisfactory decellularized extracellular matrix was developed. As suggested from the in vitro experiments, the rat chondrocytes co-cultured with allogeneic dECM grew effectively. According to the results of the alamar blue detection, dECM did not adversely affect the viability of rat chondrocytes, and dECM could up-regulate the genes related to the cartilage synthesis and metabolism. As reported from the animal experiments, dECM-CS compound could protect cartilage, alleviate knee joint pain in rats, significantly delay the progress of KOA in rats, and achieve high drug safety. In brief, dECM-CS compound shows a good therapeutic effect on KOA.

Keywords: Articular cartilage; Chitosan; Compound; Osteoarthritis; dECM.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant # BK20201221) and the Jiangsu Provincial Medical Youth Talent (Grants #QNRC2016343 and QNRC2016344). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.