Figure 6.

Safranin O staining of cross‐sections of repaired knee articular cartilage at 4 and 8 wk. One of the most important markers for evaluating cartilage repair is the assembly of proteoglycan. The internal repair integrity was shown in scaffold‐implanted groups by Safranin O staining and was especially clear in the implant group. We found that the control group (8 wk) showed a reduced defect area but did not form repair morphology. Among the implant groups, at 4 wk post‐surgery, the newly formed tissue showed a light colour relative to the original tissue, although the newly formed tissue showed the component of proteoglycan. At 8 wk, the newly formed tissue completely covered the implant material and formed an integral surface with a thickness of ~400 mm. However, the PCEC films were embedded in the deep defects and did not degrade. The experiments were repeated three times (n=3)