A Cartilage Growth Mixture Model With Collagen Remodeling: Validation Protocols

The attainment of specific design goals related to tissue structure and function is likely critical to the development of a consistently successful strategy for articular cartilage (AC) repair. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a cartilage growth mixture (CGM) model that may be used with experimental approaches to improve AC repair strategies. The CGM employs a “stress balance” hypothesis: at equilibrium, the crosslinked collagen (COL) network restrains the proteoglycan (PG) swelling pressure generated by fixed charge density. The specific objectives are to: 1) refine a previous CGM model [1] to include COL remodeling; 2) develop analytical protocols for model validation that are based on experimental data from select in vitro growth protocols; and 3) test CGM model hypotheses.