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Laser Capture Microdissection of Mouse Embryonic Cartilage and Bone for Gene Expression Analysis
Published on: December 18, 2019
Raman spectroscopic insight into osteoarthritic cartilage regeneration by mRNA therapeutics encoding
Giuseppe Pezzotti1,2, Wenliang Zhu1, Yuki Terai2
1Ceramic Physics Laboratory, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Sakyo-ku, Matsugasaki, 606-8585, Kyoto, Japan.
Abstract:
While joint arthroplasty remains nowadays the most popular option available to repair chronically degenerated osteoarthritic joints, possibilities are recently emerging for regeneration of damaged cartilage rather than its replacement with artificial biomaterials. This latter strategy could allow avoiding the quite intrusive surgical procedures associated with total joint replacement. Building upon this notion, we first apply Raman spectroscopy to characterize diseased cartilage in a mice model of instability-induced knee osteoarthritis (OA) upon medial collateral ligament (MCL) and medial meniscus (MM) transections. Then, we examine the same OA model after cartilage regeneration by means of messenger RNA (mRNA) delivery of a cartilage-anabolic runt-related transcription factor 1 (RUNX1). Raman spectroscopy is shown to substantiate at the molecular scale the therapeutic effect of the Runx1 mRNA cartilage regeneration approach. This study demonstrates how the Raman spectroscopic method could support and accelerate the development of new therapies for cartilage diseases.
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