High-depth transcriptomic profiling reveals the temporal gene signature of human mesenchymal stem cells during chondrogenesis

What is it about?

Osteoarthritis is a disease that affects a large population of the United States and the world. Unfortunately, current treatments for osteoarthritis are limited. For example, an artificial joint replacement can only last for 10-20 years inside the patients. Thus, there exists a need for cartilage tissue engineering - to create a biologic cartilage from a patient's cells that can last longer and be more functional than the current treatment. We strive to understand the underlying biological processes of mesenchymal stem cells for this purpose of creating better cartilage tissue engineering. By following these cells towards their process of making cartilage in a dish at different time points, we utilized next generation sequencing at high depth and integrative, in-depth computational analyses to predict the genes that can potentially make this process better. As such, we can harness the full potentials of mesenchymal stem cells for the purpose of cartilage tissue engineering.

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