Chondrocyte Isolation, Expansion, and Culture on Polymer Scaffolds

The chondrocyte is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the complex extracellular matrix (ECM) of articular cartilage. Therefore, chondrocytes directly control the biomechanical properties of the tissue that enable articular cartilage to bear cyclical compressive loading (1 ). The ultimate goal of articular cartilage engineering is to produce a cartilage construct with identical structure and properties to native tissue. Although this goal has not yet been achieved, many advances have been made in understanding the biology of the extracellular cartilage matrix (1 |–5 ).