Cellular methods in cartilage research: primary human chondrocytes in culture and chondrogenesis in human bone marrow stem cells.

Work in our laboratory has focused on the in vitro culture of both human articular chondrocytes and human mesenchymal stem cells to understand what controls their ability to synthesise an appropriate cartilage-like extracellular matrix containing a predominantly collagen type II fibrillar network embedded in an aggrecan-rich ECM. This review focuses on the methodologies that we have found to be successful with cartilage and bone marrow sources of human cells and comments on the many factors which may enable improved phenotypic performance once the cells are in a fully chondrogenic environment.