Characterization of a migrative subpopulation of adult human nasoseptal chondrocytes with progenitor cell features and their potential for in vivo cartilage regeneration strategies

Progenitor cells display interesting features for tissue repair and reconstruction. In the last years, such cells have been identified in different cartilage types. In this study, we isolated a migrative subpopulation of adult human nasoseptal chondrocytes with progenitor cell features by outgrowth from human nasal septum cartilage. These putative progenitor cells were comparatively characterized with mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and human nasal septum chondrocytes with respect to their cellular characteristics as well as surface marker profile using flow cytometric analyses. Differentiation capacity was evaluated on protein and gene expression levels