Figure 1.

Knee joint specimen obtained during total knee replacement and schematic representation of sample collection protocol. (A) Specimens included femoral condyle and tibial plateau cartilage from both medial and lateral compartments, as previously described [12]. (B) Cartilage areas were: 1, medial condyle; 2, lateral condyle; 3, medial tibial plateau; 4, lateral tibial plateau; S, superficial layer; D, deep layer (two samples each of S and D); E, intercondyle cartilage was harvested if available. A maximum of 10 articular cartilage slices could be harvested from each knee joint.