TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kroner-Weigl, Niklas
A1  - Chu, Jin
A1  - Rudert, Maximilian
A1  - Alt, Volker
A1  - Shukunami, Chisa
A1  - Docheva, Denitsa
T1  - Dexamethasone is not sufficient to facilitate tenogenic differentiation of dermal fibroblasts in a 3D organoid model
JF  - Biomedicines
N2  - Self-assembling three-dimensional organoids that do not rely on an exogenous scaffold but maintain their native cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix interactions represent a promising model in the field of tendon tissue engineering. We have identified dermal fibroblasts (DFs) as a potential cell type for generating functional tendon-like tissue. The glucocorticoid dexamethasone (DEX) has been shown to regulate cell proliferation and facilitate differentiation towards other mesenchymal lineages. Therefore, we hypothesized that the administration of DEX could reduce excessive DF proliferation and thus, facilitate the tenogenic differentiation of DFs using a previously established 3D organoid model combined with dose-dependent application of DEX. Interestingly, the results demonstrated that DEX, in all tested concentrations, was not sufficient to notably induce the tenogenic differentiation of human DFs and DEX-treated organoids did not have clear advantages over untreated control organoids. Moreover, high concentrations of DEX exerted a negative impact on the organoid phenotype. Nevertheless, the expression profile of tendon-related genes of untreated and 10 nM DEX-treated DF organoids was largely comparable to organoids formed by tendon-derived cells, which is encouraging for further investigations on utilizing DFs for tendon tissue engineering.
KW  - 3D organoids
KW  - dermal fibroblasts
KW  - dexamethasone
KW  - scaffold-free
KW  - tenogenic differentiation
KW  - tendon tissue engineering
Y1  - 2023
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-311234
SN  - 2227-9059
VL  - 11
IS  - 3
ER  -