Chondrogenic Differentiation of MSCs Induced via Cbfa1 Driven by SOX9 Promoter

The good seed cells were the key component of cartilage tissue engineering. Because of their own advantages, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) became a good choice of seed cells in cartilage tissue engineering field. However, how to regulate MSCs to directly differentiate into chondrocytes was one of the difficulties at present. Sox9 and Cbfa1 were two important transcription factors for chondrogenic differentiation of MSCs and played an important role in the cartilage formation. In this study, the eukaryotic expression vector of Cbfa1 driven by Sox9 promoter was constructed and then was transfected into MSCs. The higher capacity of stable transfectants(Cbfa1-MSCs) for chondrogenic differentiation had been identified. As a readily available source of seed cells for cartilage tissue engineering, Cbfa1-MSCs should have broad application prospects.