Chondrogenic Differentiation of Human Wharton’s Jelly and Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Focus on the Role of an Acrylamide-Free Cross-Linked Hyaluronic Acid Hydrogel

Hyaluronic Acid (HA) is a natural biopolymer commonly used to reduce inflammatory process in degenerative joint disease such as Osteoarthritis (OA). In the last years, its possible use as biocompatible scaffold for cartilage tissue engineering was highlighted. In this field, to achieve promising results, recent studies have underlined the advantages of combining tissue engineering and cell therapy approaches. To date, the mainly cells employed for cartilage regeneration are Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) isolate from bone marrow. However, since their use has several limitations, there was a growing interesting in MSCs from perinatal tissue, such as umbilical cord, as possible source for cartilage regeneration. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of an innovative acrylamide-free cross-linked HA Hydrogel formulation (HyLink®) on chondrogenic differentiation process employing both human umbilical cord Wharton’s jelly- and Bone Marrow-derived MSC (hUC-WJ-MSC s and hBM-MSCs). Our data showed that the HyLink improved the chondrogenic differentiation in both mesenchymal cellular models as revealed by the increase of Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) deposition and the mRNA levels of chondrogenic markers (SOX9, COL2a1 and ACAN). In addition, the results demonstrated that hUC-WJ-MSC have a greater cartilage differentiation potential compared to the MSCs isolated from bone marrow. Overall, our results demonstrate that HyLink improves chondrogenic differentiation process both in hBM-MSCs and hUC-WJ-MSC . Since the latest showed greater cartilage differentiation potential, we suggest that MSCs isolated from perinatal tissue might be a promising cell source for regenerative medicine in the orthopedic field