Articular chondrocyte passage number: influence on adhesion, migration, cytoskeletal organisation and phenotype in response to nano- and micro-metric topography.

The isolation and culture of articular chondrocytes is a prerequisite of their use in tissue engineering, but prolonged culture and passaging is associated with de-differentiation. In this paper we studied the influence of nanometric and micrometric grooves (85 nm to 8 microm in depth and 2 microm to 20 microm in width) on 1st and 2nd passage ovine chondrocytes since our earlier findings indicate that primary cells are not affected by such features. 1st and 2nd passage chondrocytes cultured on grooved substrata showed a polarisation of cell shape parallel to the groove long axis and F-actin condensations were evident at groove ridge boundaries. An increase in cell migration with increasing groove depth was observed. Both passages of chondrocytes maintained type II collagen expression, but to a lesser degree in 2nd. This study demonstrates that passage number alters the response of chondrocytes to micrometric and nanometric topography, and could be important in ex vivo cartilage engineering.