Table 1.

Studies of human synovium derived MSC in the repair of cartilage in vivo.

References	Study design	Cell source	Subject	Number of subjects	Number of controls	Method of extraction	Cell treatment	Method of delivery	Outcome
Li et al. (2018)	Case control	Human	Murine	10	10	Arthroscopic flushing fluid from knee joint	Flushing fluid cells were plated on culture medium. Colony forming assays, flow cytometry, and proliferation assays were used to validate MSCs. MSCs were induced in chondrogenic medium and subsequently fixed and stained with Safranin O	Xenogenic injection of MSC encapsulated in polyPEGDA/HA hydrogel into full thickness cartilage defects in trochlear groove	Reduction in defect area compared to control at 4 and 8 weeks
Shimomura et al. (2018)	Case series	Human	Human with knee OA	5	N/A	Arthroscopic biopsy	Cultured cells were characterized by flow cytometry for MSC markers. They were not induced into chondrogenic differentiation	Autologous implantation of cultured tissue-engineered construct (TEC) into chondral defects without fixation	Improvement in PROMs for pain, ADL, QoL, at 48 months. Secure defect filling confirmed by second look arthroscopy, improved MRI score
Sekiya et al. (2015)	Case series	Human	Human	10	N/A	Arthroscopic biopsy of subsynovial tissue on the femur at the suprapatellar pouch	Synovial MSCs were cultured with Invitrogen containing antibiotics. No in vitro assays were carried out to assess chondrogenic differentiation	Autologous injection of cultured cells into femoral condyle defect	Improved qualitative appearance in cartilage defect filling in four out of 10 patients, improved MRI score and increased Lysholm score at an average 52 month follow up
Koizumi et al. (2016)	Case control	Human	Murine	36 knees in 18 rats	4 knees in 2 rats	Arthroscopic biopsy of synovium from knee joint of patients with rheumatoid arthritis or with osteoarthritis or without either	Synovial MSCs were cultured in chondrogenic medium and evaluated. Total RNA from synovial MSC pellets were analyzed using Real Time PCR. qRT-PCR was also used to assess gene expression. GAG expression was quantified using a protein assay.	Xenogenic transplantation of MSC on a tissue engineered scaffold	Osteochondral repair using MSC derived from all patients were superior to control. There was no difference between cells from RA, OA, or normal patients