ABSTRACT
Low back pain due to degeneration of intervertebral disc (IVD) is a major health problem resulting insignificant disability as well as adding to the economic burden. Discectomy is a very common procedure doneworldwide to relieve this pain. At present all the surgically removed disc tissue is mostly discarded. However,there are reports that state that progenitor cells in the IVD can be grown ex vivo and have the potential to beused for IVD repair and regeneration. We report here that viable cells can be harvested from surgicallyremoved, herniated disc tissue and can be potentially used in cell based therapy. Further, we have successfullyreplaced xenogenic supplements such as foetal bovine serum with either autologous serum or human plateletlysate for culturing IVD cells from patient’s surgically removed disc tissue, without loss of any cell characteristics, including cell surface markers, growth factor secretion in the conditioned medium and osteogenic andchondrogenic differentiation potential in vitro. The present work will not only contribute to overcoming someof the major barriers in carrying out human clinical trials, but also provide a cheap, alternate source of proteinsand growth factors for growing IVD cells ex vivo for therapy