A Hybrid Model of Cartilage Regeneration Capturing the Interactions Between Cellular Dynamics and Porosity.

A Hybrid Model of Cartilage Regeneration Capturing the Interactions Between Cellular Dynamics and Porosity. Bull Math Biol. 2020 Jan 22;82(2):18 Authors: Cassani S, Olson SD Abstract To accelerate the development of strategies for cartilage tissue engineering, models are necessary to investigate the interactions between cellular dynamics and the local microenvironment. We use a discrete framework to capture the individual behavior of cells, modeling experiments where cells are seeded in a porous scaffold or hydrogel and over the time course of a month, the scaffold slowly degrades while cells divide and synthesize extracellular matrix constituents. The movement of cells and the ability to proliferate is a function of the local porosity, defined as the volume fraction of fluid in the surrounding region. A phenomenological approach is used to capture a continuous profile for the degrading scaffold and accumulating matrix, which will then change the local porosity throughout the construct. We parameterize the model by first matching total cell counts in the construct to chondrocytes seeded in a polyglycolic acid scaffold (Freed et al. in Biotechnol Bioeng 43:597-604, 1994). We investigate the influence of initial scaffold porosity on the total cell count and spatial profiles of cell and ECM in the construct. Cell counts were higher at day 30 in scaffolds of lower initial porosity, and similar cell counts were obtained using different m...
Source: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology - Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Tags: Bull Math Biol Source Type: research