Figure 1.

Mouse cartilage explants and Flexercell apparatus employed for mechanical stimulation. (a,b) Rib cages were harvested from one litter of 6-day-old Swiss mice. (c) Costal cartilage was cleaned and cut into little segments. 50 mg of the costal cartilage pool were put into a Biopress culture plate and 1.5 ml of media was added. (d) Each well was hermetically sealed with a specific cap. (e) The physiological compressive stress was applied by the Flexercell Compression Plus system described by Fermor and colleagues [26] on mouse costal cartilage explants. Intermittent compression was applied using a sinusoidal waveform at 0.5 Hz and 1.0 MPa of magnitude.