Petropoulou Katerina, Platania Varvara, Chatzinikolaidou Maria, Mitraki Anna
Department of Biology, University of Crete, 70013 Heraklion, Greece.
Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, 70013 Heraklion, Greece.
Materials (Basel). 2022 Dec 14;15(24):8928. doi: 10.3390/ma15248928.
Hydrogels have been used as scaffolds for biomineralization in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine for the repair and treatment of many tissue types. In the present work, we studied an amino acid-based material that is attached to protecting groups and self-assembles into biocompatible and stable nanostructures that are suitable for tissue engineering applications. Specifically, the doubly protected aspartic residue (Asp) with fluorenyl methoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) protecting groups have been shown to lead to the formation of well-ordered fibrous structures. Many amino acids and small peptides which are modified with protecting groups display relatively fast self-assembly and exhibit remarkable physicochemical properties leading to three-dimensional (3D) networks, the trapping of solvent molecules, and forming hydrogels. In this study, the self-assembling fibrous structures are targeted toward calcium binding and act as nucleation points for the binding of the available phosphate groups. The cell viability, proliferation, and osteogenic differentiation of pre-osteoblastic cells cultured on the formed hydrogel under various conditions demonstrate that hydrogel formation in CaCl and CaCl-NaHPO solutions lead to calcium ion binding onto the hydrogels and enrichment with phosphate groups, respectively, rendering these mechanically stable hydrogels osteoinductive scaffolds for bone tissue engineering.
水凝胶已被用作组织工程和再生医学中生物矿化的支架，用于修复和治疗多种组织类型。在本研究中，我们研究了一种基于氨基酸的材料，该材料连接有保护基团，并自组装成适合组织工程应用的生物相容性和稳定的纳米结构。具体而言，带有芴甲氧羰基（Fmoc）保护基团的双保护天冬氨酸残基（Asp）已被证明可导致形成有序的纤维结构。许多用保护基团修饰的氨基酸和小肽表现出相对较快的自组装，并展现出显著的物理化学性质，从而形成三维（3D）网络、捕获溶剂分子并形成水凝胶。在本研究中，自组装纤维结构靶向钙结合，并作为结合可用磷酸基团的成核点。在各种条件下在形成的水凝胶上培养的前成骨细胞的细胞活力、增殖和成骨分化表明，在CaCl和CaCl-NaHPO溶液中形成水凝胶分别导致钙离子结合到水凝胶上并富含磷酸基团，使这些机械稳定的水凝胶成为用于骨组织工程 的骨诱导支架。
