Long-term repair of porcine articular cartilage using cryopreservable, clinically compatible human embryonic stem cell-derived chondrocytes
Frank A. Petrigliano, Nancy Q. Liu, Siyoung Lee, Jade Tassey, Arijita Sarkar, Yucheng Lin, Liangliang Li, Yifan Yu, Dawei Geng, Jiankang Zhang, Ruzanna Shkhyan, Jacob Bogdanov, Ben Van Handel, Gabriel B. Ferguson, Young‐Joo Lee, Svenja Hinderer, Kuo-Chang Tseng, Aaron Kavanaugh, J. Gage Crump, April D. Pyle, Katja Schenke‐Layland, Fabrizio Billi, Liming Wang, Jay R. Lieberman, Mark Hurtig, Denis Evseenko
Abstract
Osteoarthritis (OA) impacts hundreds of millions of people worldwide, with those affected incurring significant physical and financial burdens. Injuries such as focal defects to the articular surface are a major contributing risk factor for the development of OA. Current cartilage repair strategies are moderately effective at reducing pain but often replace damaged tissue with biomechanically inferior fibrocartilage. Here we describe the development, transcriptomic ontogenetic characterization and quality assessment at the single cell level, as well as the scaled manufacturing of an allogeneic human pluripotent stem cell-derived articular chondrocyte formulation that exhibits long-term functional repair of porcine articular cartilage. These results define a new potential clinical paradigm for articular cartilage repair and mitigation of the associated risk of OA.