Sturgeon collagen fibrils as a promising biomaterial for cartilage tissue engineering

Cartilage tissue engineering (CTE) provides a promising solution for osteoarthritis, with scaffold materials playing a crucial role in supporting cell activity. There have been many studies of various scaffold materials, yet few studies have directly compared the effects of marine collagen fibrils on chondrocyte chondrogenesis. This study determined the effects of types I and II collagen fibrils derived from sturgeon on ATDC5 cell chondrogenesis. The CCK-8 results showed that type I fibrils promoted ATDC5 cell proliferation more effectively than type II fibrils. Alcian Blue staining results revealed that cells cultured on type II fibrils secreted more proteoglycans than those on type I fibrils. The mRNA expression analysis indicated that type I fibrils initiated cell differentiation at an early stage, but simultaneously induced premature hypertrophy, suggesting that type I fibrils were difficult to maintain the chondrogenic phenotype in long-term culture. In contrast, type II fibrils generally enhanced the expression of chondrogenic genes, but also upregulated matrix metalloproteinase collagen-degrading enzymes, thereby accelerating the matrix degradation process. These findings suggested the potential of sturgeon collagen as a CTE scaffold material, and identified the different effects of types I and II collagen fibrils on ATDC5 cell chondrogenesis, to provide a theoretical foundation for selecting suitable scaffold biomaterials, based on different needs, while also providing new insights for the application of marine collagen.