Nondestructive Assessment of Engineered Cartilage Composition by Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Tissue engineering presents a strategy to overcome the limitations of current tissue healing methods. Scaffolds, cells, external growth factors and mechanical input are combined in an effort to obtain constructs with properties that mimic native tissues. However, engineered constructs developed using similar culture environments can have very different matrix composition and biomechanical properties. Accordingly, a nondestructive technique to assess constructs during development such that appropriate compositional endpoints can be defined is desirable. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) analysis is a modality being investigated to address the challenges associated with current evaluation techniques, which includes nondestructive compositional assessment. In the present study, cartilage tissue constructs were grown using chondrocytes seeded onto polyglycolic acid (PGA) scaffolds in similar environments in three separate tissue culture experiments and monitored using NIRS. Multivariate partial least squares (PLS) analysis models of NIR spectra were calculated and used to predict tissue composition, with biochemical assay information used as the reference data. Results showed that for combined data from all tissue culture experiments, PLS models were able to assess composition with significant correlations to reference values, including engineered cartilage water (at 5200 cm(-1), R = 0.68, p = 0.03), proteoglycan (at 4310 cm(-1), R = 0.82, p = 0.007), and collagen (at 4610 cm(-1), R = 0.84, p = 0.005). In addition, degradation of PGA was monitored using specific NIRS frequencies. These results demonstrate that NIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis provides a nondestructive modality to assess engineered cartilage, which could provide information to determine the optimal time for tissue harvest for clinical applications.