The promoter characterized in this study has been made accessible as a resource for the skeletal tissue engineering and regenerative medicine community. When combined with suitable reporter vectors, the resulting tools can be used for noninvasive and/or high-throughput screening of test conditions for stimulating chondrogenesis by candidate stem/progenitor cells. As demonstrated in this study, they can also be used with small animal imaging platforms to monitor the chondrogenic activity of implanted progenitors within orthotopic models of bone and cartilage repair.
Keywords: bioluminescence imaging; chondrogenesis; endochondral ossification; lentiviral vectors; mesenchymal stromal cells; osteochondral defect.