Fig. 3

Metabolic activity and ECM turnover in pro-inflammatory bovine cartilage explants. Bovine cartilage explants were pre-cultured for 1 week with OSM + TNF-α (5/10 ng/mL), and then cultured for further 5 weeks with weekly administration (48 h duration) of indicated compounds. Metabolic activity (a) was measured using AlamarBlue after 5 weeks of compound-culturing. ProC2 (b), C2M (c), AGNx2 (d) and AGNx1 (e) (Nordic Bioscience) was measured in conditioned media collected at 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 weeks of compound-culturing, and values were placebo-corrected. All values are mean ± SEM of six replicate explants. One-way ANOVA was used for multiple comparisons to the placebo group at each time point. To compare the biomarker responses following pro-inflammatory and non-inflammatory (Fig. 2) pre-culturing, the iAUC of similar doses under each condition were calculated, and presented as mean ± SEM of six replicate explants (graph to the right). Unpaired t-tests were used to compare the two conditions. Significance levels are indicated by asterisks; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. All results are from one study (Study 2)