Osteoarthritis and cartilage
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Osteoarthr. Cartil. · Mar 2002
Control of extracellular matrix homeostasis of normal cartilage by a TGFbeta autocrine pathway. Validation of flow cytometry as a tool to study chondrocyte metabolism in vitro.
To validate flow cytometry as an experimental technique for the study of the homeostasis of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of human articular cartilage. ⋯ Some aspects of ECM metabolism of normal cartilage were evaluated by flow cytometry. Chondrocytes from normal human cartilage, when cultured in gelled agarose, showed correlations between the expression of TGF-betaRII/TGF-beta1 and the intracellular levels of TIMPs, indicating that TGF-beta autocrine pathway may contribute to homeostasis of the ECM in the normal cartilage. The relations between MMPs, TIMPs and the ECM molecules support that a physiological balance between MMPs and TIMPs results in a well-controlled matrix turnover in normal cartilage.