Fig. 4

Effects of FGF-2 overexpression upon the hypertrophic and terminal differentiation processes in rAAV-transduced, chondrogenically-induced human bone marrow aspirates. The aspirates were transduced with rAAV-lacZ or rAAV-hFGF-2 as described in the Figs. 1, 2, and 3 and kept in chondrogenic medium for 21 days. The samples were processed to monitor matrix mineralization (alizarin red staining) and the expression of type-I and type-X collagen (immunodetection) (all at magnification ×20; representative data) with corresponding histomorphometric assessments and to estimate the type-I and -X collagen contents as described in the Methods. *Statistically significant compared with rAAV-lacZ