Human Chondrocyte Viability against Time and Density in Calcium Alginate In Vitro

ABSTRACT

One Approach for caraniofacial contouring surgery is to use autogenous cartilage cells localized within a biocompatible polymer. This study investigated varying conditions of polymerization at cell density on the viability of human chondrocytes encapsulated in calcium alginate. Human rib cartilage was dissected, enzymatically dissociated, and the chondrocytes were collected by centrifugation. Alginate discs containig chondrocyte were made from 1.5% sodium alginate and 100 mM CaCI solution. Viability of chondrocytes was measured by quantification of the DNA content per alginate discs at six different time intervals from 0 to 5 weeeks. Significant initial cell loss was observed in the first two weeks after which the survival rate remained stationary. To optimize calcium alginate matrix formation with human chondrocytes, the cell density was varied during manufacture of the alginate discs. Chondrocyte viability was measured after fourteen days of culture as same method mentioned above. Varying the cell density at the time of polymerization from 2.0x10 to 2.0x10' chondrocytes/ml produced a direct relationship between number of cells and chondrocyte viability. The greatest viability(70.2 percent) was observed with cell density of 2.0 x 10' chondrocytes/ml. These data demonstrate that cell density is a critical factor for successful encapsulation of human cartilage cells in a calcium alginate matrix.