Figure 3.

ADAMTS9-AS2 Promotes hMSC Chondrogenic Differentiation

(A) Forced expression of ADAMTS9-AS2 in hMSCs led to a significant increase of the transcript, as measured by qPCR. (B–D) Expression of chondrogenic genes measured by qPCR at representative time points in hMSCs during chondrogenic differentiation between control and ADAMTS9-AS2 overexpression group. (E) Synthetic glycosaminoglycan in ADAMTS9-AS2-overexpressed hMSCs compared to controls on day 14, assessed by Safranine O staining, Alcian blue staining, and toluidine blue staining. Scale bar, 100 μm. (F) Antibody staining of paraffin-embedded sections of day 14 micromass showed Col2α1, ACAN, and ColX abundance between control and ADAMTS9-AS2 overexpression group. Scale bar, 50 μm. (G–I) Quantitative statistics for dyeing results of (F) between control and ADAMTS9-AS2 overexpression group. Experiments were performed in triplicate and error bars represent SD of a triplicate set of experiments. Data are shown as mean ± SD; *p, 0.05; **p, 0.01; ns, non-significant.