Identification of Human Juvenile Chondrocyte-specific factors

Although regeneration of human cartilage is inherently inefficient, age is an important risk factor for Osteoarthritis (OA). Recent reports have provided compelling evidence that juvenile chondrocytes (from donors below 13 years of age) are more efficient at generating articular cartilage as compared to adult chondrocytes. However, the molecular basis for such a superior regenerative capability is not understood. In order to identify the cell-intrinsic differences between juvenile and adult cartilage, we have systematically profiled global gene expression changes between a small cohort of human neonatal/juvenile and adult chondrocytes. No such study is available for human chondrocytes although ‘young’ and ‘old’ bovine and equine cartilage have been recently profiled. 3 juvenile chondrocyte samples and 2 adult chondrocyte samples were profiled. Bone-marrow derived mesenchymal cells (MSC) from 2 donors were profiled. We analyzed the changes in gene expression; genes with a fold-change ≥ or ≤1.5, with a difference in intensity of >100 and within the lower 90% confidence bound were selected.