Figure 5.

Chondroprotective and anti-inflammatory effect of mTORC1 inhibition on patient-derived OA chondrocyte pellets in an OA-model. Chondrocyte pellets were cultured with media containing rapamycin, IL-1β or rapamycin in combination with IL-1β for 14 days. Chondrocyte pellets cultured in chondrogenic culture media alone are indicated as control. CASP3, SOX9, IL-6 and MMP13 mRNAs were analyzed by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) (A–D). Experiments were performed in triplicates and results are shown as fold change (FC) of respective gene expression ± SEM versus control. p < 0.05 was considered significant (*) and p < 0.01 was considered highly significant (**). Exact values were given when p > 0.05.