Adult articular cartilage of many species including humans has a limited capacity for repair following injury. The hypothesis that this might be related to a lack of responsiveness to growth factors involved in growth was investigated. Cartilage explants from 4 child and 5 adult human donors were cultured in the presence of various growth factors. Incorporation of $ sp{35}$SO$ sb4$ into proteoglycans and $ sp3$H-thymidine into deoxyribonucleic acid used as measures of the biosynthetic response of cartilage. / Young cartilage showed the ability to behave in an autocrine or paracrine manner to stimulate its basal biosynthetic rate. Immature chondrocytes respond well to somatomedin C (insulin-like growth factor, IGF-I) and insulin but there was no significant stimulation in old cartilage. This data suggests a specific loss of responsiveness to IGF-I in mature cartilage. However, adult cartilage was stimulated by IGF-I and insulin after prolonged incubation times. Adult cartilage could also be stimulated by the addition of fetal calf serum and to some degree by platelet derived growth factor, indicating that adult chondrocytes still have the capacity to respond to external stimuli. The relevance of these results is discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.59530 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Benaroch, Thierry Ezer |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Division of Surgical Research.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001233357, proquestno: AAIMM63664, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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