Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Mar 18, 2016; 7(3): 149-155
Published online Mar 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i3.149
Induced pluripotent stem cells in cartilage repair
Steven A Lietman
Steven A Lietman, Cleveland Clinic Departments of BME and Orthopaedics, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States
Author contributions: Lietman SA solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author certifies that he has no commercial associations (e.g., consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangements, etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Steven A Lietman, MD, Cleveland Clinic Departments of BME and Orthopaedics, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Ave, Desk A41, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States. lietmas@ccf.org
Telephone: +1-216-4452742 Fax: +1-216-4456255
Received: June 30, 2015
Peer-review started: July 3, 2015
First decision: October 13, 2015
Revised: December 1, 2015
Accepted: December 29, 2015
Article in press: January 4, 2016
Published online: March 18, 2016
Abstract

Articular cartilage repair techniques are challenging. Human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) theoretically provide an unlimited number of specialized cells which could be used in articular cartilage repair. However thus far chondrocytes from iPSCs have been created primarily by viral transfection and with the use of cocultured feeder cells. In addition chondrocytes derived from iPSCs have usually been formed in condensed cell bodies (resembling embryoid bodies) that then require dissolution with consequent substantial loss of cell viability and phenotype. All of these current techniques used to derive chondrocytes from iPSCs are problematic but solutions to these problems are on the horizon. These solutions will make iPSCs a viable alternative for articular cartilage repair in the near future.

Keywords: Induced pluripotent stem cells, Articular cartilage, Cartilage repair, Stem cells

Core tip: Herein we review the challenges in articular cartilage repair. Further we explain that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) represent an exciting theoretically limitless source of autologous cells for articular cartilage repair. We also discuss a novel systematic approach to optimally derive articular chondrocytes from iPSCs.