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Updated: Jul 6, 2026
Differentiating Chondrocytes from Peripheral Blood-derived Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
Published on: July 18, 2017
Correlation between cell morphology and aggrecan gene expression level during differentiation from mesenchymal stem
Mutsumi Takagi1, Takayuki Kitabayashi, Satoru Koizumi
1Division of Biotechnology and Macromolecular Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-8628, Japan. takagi-m@eng.hokudai.ac.jp
Abstract:
A morphological parameter of polygonal index was defined as the ratio of cell adhesion area versus the square of the major cell axis, and cells that had an adhesion area larger than 4000 mum(2) and a polygonal index larger than 0.3 were considered large polygonal cells. Cell morphology tended to change from fibroblast-like to polygonal and the percentage of the large polygonal cells increased almost in proportion to aggrecan mRNA expression level during the differentiation culture of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to chondrocytes. Approximately 80% of the large polygonal cells were negative for MSC marker (CD90, CD166) expression and the aggrecan mRNA expression level of the large polygonal cells was markedly higher than that of cells with other morphologies.
