Abstract

Background
：Culture method for expanding chondrocytes ex vivo is an important procedure in cartilage tissue engineering. In most laboratories related to tissue engineering, fetal bovine serum is widely used as supplement. However, the chondrocytes grown in a medium containing fetal bovine serum may cause infectious viral diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and/or unfavorable immune reaction to bovine proteins. As a way out of these problems, we examined whether a patient's autologous serum could support the growth and attachment of his/her chondrocytes. Materials and Methods：Chondrocytes were isolated from microtia patients (age between 5 to 12) by enzymatic digestion and cultured in a medium supplemented with 10% autologous serum, 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 10% banked allogenic serum respectively. Proliferation and attachment rate were assessed by Trypan blue staining and MTT assay. Attachment rate was checked at 6, 12, 24, 36, 48 hours after plating of cells and counting was done with hemocytometer after trypan blue exclusion. Proliferation rate was checked at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 days after plating of cells and measurement was done with cell counting and MTT assay.
Results
：As a result, chondrocytes which were cultured in the medium supplemented with 10% autologous serum, represented higher rate of both proliferation and attachment, which is comparable to the chondrocytes in the culture supplemented with 10% FBS. But, chondrocytes in the culture supplemented with 10% banked allogenic serum showed lower rate of proliferation and attachment.
Conclusion
：The beneficial effect of autologous serum which has been confirmed in this study is another important progress for clinical application of tissue engineering. The possibility of banked allogenic serum is still remained. In this study, we used banked allogenic serum which containing anti-coagulants and this component may have affected on the result. Fresh allogenic serum should be utilized for next step of experiment.

• Keywords: Cartilage tissue engineering, Autologous serum, Chondrocyte culture;