Figure 10. Relative chondrogenic gene expression between control and chondrogenic pellets and cell-scaffold constructs at 4 weeks.

Collagen type II gene was not expressed in all control cultures for both pellets and cell-scaffolds at week 4. Both collagen type II and aggrecan genes were significantly increased by week 4 over control groups (*p<0.05; t-test). The increase in SOX9 was less significant between the control groups and the chondrogenic groups at 4 weeks. These results represent 3 separate experiments using 3 separate biological replicates (N = 3) as well as triplicate internal replicates for each qPCR reaction. Mean plotted with error bars representing the SEM.