Helena Hamzehpour, Bergþóra S. Snorradóttir, Helgi Jónsson and Ólafur E. Sigurjónsson
Despite its significant global impact on quality of life, no disease-modifying treatments for hand-osteoarthritis (HOA) have been developed. A major obstacle in developing new HOA therapies is the lack of accurate models for testing, as current animal models do not adequately replicate the disease’s complex characteristics. This study aimed to develop an efficient method for transporting and isolating chondrocytes from articular cartilage tissue collected post-surgery, for the development of an in vitro HOA model.
To optimize tissue transportation, two temperatures were tested: -20°C and room temperature. Additionally, two chondrocyte isolation methods were evaluated: a classical digestion method and a dual digestion method. For the classical method, diced cartilage was incubated in 0.2% collagenase II for 22 hours, directly after dicing. As for the dual method, cartilage was digested in two rounds, with 0.2% collagenase II added immediately after dicing and again after 12 hours of incubation.
It was evident that cartilage could be collected faster and more efficiently at room temperature. Freezing and thawing the tissue made it difficult to separate the cartilage from the remaining tissue. Transporting samples at room temperature, on the other hand, had no significant impact on tissue processing or cell viability. Visually, the dual digestion method showed no undigested cartilage fragments after 22 hours, unlike the classical method. The cell yield from the dual digestion method was significantly higher, with 10281 cells/mg of cartilage compared to 2166 cells/mg using the classical method (p<0.05). Further experiments with additional tissue samples are needed for further validation.
