Stem cell based therapy is a new paradigm for treatment of many abnormal conditions such as cartilage lesions. Although this method has many beneficial therapeutic effects, the serious adverse event of stem cell transplantation such as tumorigenic capacity is not deniable. Thus, other strategy such as differentiated cells transplantation instead of stem cells transplantation has been proposed. Overall, before cell transplantation, in vitro cell isolation in order to raise the purity of

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... ted cells is necessary. So, the aim of this study is to identifying a unique CD "signature" that could be ascribed specifically to the chondrocyte before cell transplantation. Methods: Human adipose derived stem cells (hADSC) were isolated from lipoaspirate samples and were subjected to osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation in culture medium which supplemented with specific materials. In addition, Human articular cartilages were obtained from shoulder joint and chondrocytes isolation was carried out. Finally, Flow cytometry technique was done in order to specify of CD expression in stem cells, human articular chondrocyte and differentiated cells. Results: Our findings showed that hADSCs have the ability to differentiate into osteoblasts and chondrocytes. In addition, flow cytometry analysis indicated that 0.24 ± 0.31 percent of hADSCs expressed CD14/45 and 0.34 ± 0.11 percent of them expressed CD3/19 markers which are specific marker of chondrocytes. Whereas, one week after chondrogenic differentiation 99.92 ± 0.14 percent of differentiated cells expressed CD14/45 and 99.88 ± 0.12 of them expressed CD3/19 markers. Moreover, two weeks post differentiation; the expression of these markers not changed and was similar to human articular chondrocytes. Conclusion: During chondrogenesis and before cell transplantation, CD14/45 and CD3/19 markers can be used to identify differentiated chondrocytes from undifferentiated stem cells.