Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Science and Engineering, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
J Biomed Mater Res B Appl Biomater. 2023 Oct;111(10):1763-1774. doi: 10.1002/jbm.b.35283. Epub 2023 May 26.
Bone tissue engineered scaffolds are designed to mimic the natural environment for regeneration when typical healing is inhibited. Autografts are the current gold standard for treatment but are limited by available bone and supplementary surgical sites that broaden complications and comorbidities. Cryogels are an ideal scaffold in bone regeneration due to their mechanical integrity and marcoporous structure that elicits angiogenesis and subsequently new bone tissue formation. To aid in bioactivity and osteoinductivity, manuka honey (MH) and bone char (BC) were added to gelatin and chitosan cryogels (CG). Manuka honey has powerful antimicrobial properties to aid against graft infection, and bone char is composed of 90% hydroxyapatite, a well-studied bioactive material. These additives are natural, abundant, easy to use, and cost effective. CG cryogels incorporated with either BC or MH, and plain CG cryogels were implanted into rat calvarial fracture models for cortical bone regeneration analysis. We found indication of bioactivity with both bone char and manuka honey through the presence of woven bone structure in histology stains and micro computed tomography (microCT) data. Overall, plain CG cryogels supported greater bone regeneration capabilities than the BC or MH incorporated cryogels due to a lack of advanced organized tissue formation and collagen deposition after 8 weeks of implantation; however, future work should explore varying additive concentrations and delivery methods to further assess additive potential.
骨组织工程支架旨在模拟自然环境，以促进典型愈合受到抑制时的再生。自体移植物是目前治疗的金标准，但由于可用的骨和辅助手术部位有限，会扩大并发症和合并症的发生。由于其机械完整性和大孔结构，可引发血管生成，随后形成新的骨组织，因此，冷冻凝胶是骨再生的理想支架。为了提高生物活性和骨诱导性，将麦卢卡蜂蜜 (MH) 和骨炭 (BC) 添加到明胶和壳聚糖冷冻凝胶 (CG) 中。麦卢卡蜂蜜具有强大的抗菌性能，可帮助预防移植物感染，而骨炭由 90%的羟基磷灰石组成，这是一种研究充分的生物活性材料。这些添加剂天然、丰富、易于使用且具有成本效益。将含有骨炭或麦卢卡蜂蜜的 CG 冷冻凝胶以及普通 CG 冷冻凝胶植入大鼠颅骨骨折模型中，以分析皮质骨再生情况。我们通过组织学染色和微计算机断层扫描 (microCT) 数据中发现存在编织骨结构，表明骨炭和麦卢卡蜂蜜均具有生物活性。总体而言，普通 CG 冷冻凝胶的骨再生能力强于掺入骨炭或麦卢卡蜂蜜的 CG 冷冻凝胶，因为在植入 8 周后缺乏高级组织形成和胶原沉积；然而，未来的工作应探索不同的添加剂浓度和给药方法，以进一步评估添加剂的潜力。
