Fig. 3.

Glycosaminoglycan content in conditioned media and explant tissue. a GAG release into conditioned media over a 3-week culture period as measured by a DMMB assay; data is represented as a fold-change to untreated. b Cumulative release of GAG into the medium over the entire culture period, determined as the AUC calculated from each explant’s GAG release over time. Asterisks (*) represent statistical significance level compared to untreated: ***P < 0.001. c Safranin O/Fast green staining of bovine full-depth articular cartilage explants on the final day of tissue culture in the presence or absence of pro-inflammatory cytokines (magnification: 10×, scale bar: 200 μm). Note the pronounced loss of proteoglycan (red Safranin O staining) in cytokine-treated explants compared to the untreated explants