A novel peptide-modified and gene-activated biomimetic bone matrix accelerating bone regeneration.

The osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) can be regulated by systemic or local growth factor, especially by transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1). However, how to maintain the bioactivity of exogenous TGF-β1 is a great challenge due to its short half-life time. The most promising solution is to transfer TGF-β1 gene into seed cells through transgenic technology and then transgenic cells to continuously secret endogenous TGF-β1 protein via gene expression. In this study, a novel non-viral vector (K)16GRGDSPC was chemically linked to bioactive bone matrices PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n using cross-linker to construct a novel non-viral gene transfer system. TGF-β1 gene was incubated with this system and subsequently rabbit-derived BMSCs were co-cultured with this gene-activated PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n, while co-cultured with PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n modified with (K)16GRGDSPC only and original PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n as control. Thus we fabricated three kinds of composites: Group A (BMSCs-TGF-β1DNA-(K)16GRGDSPC-PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n composite); Group B (BMSCs-(K)16GRGDSPC-PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n composite); and Group C (BMSCs-PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n composite). TGF-β1 and other osteogenic phenotype markers of alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin, osteopontin and type I collagen in Group A were all significantly higher than the other two groups ex vivo. In vivo, 15-mm long segmental rabbit bone defects were created and randomly implanted the aforementioned composites separately, and then fixed with plate-screws. The results demonstrated that the implants in Group A significantly accelerated bone regeneration compared with the other implants based on X-rays, histological and biomechanical examinations. Therefore, we conclude this novel peptide-modified and gene-activated biomimetic bone matrix of TGF-β1DNA-(K)16GRGDSPC-PLGA-[ASP-PEG]n is a very promising scaffold biomaterial for accelerating bone regeneration.