Boosting osteogenic potential and bone regeneration by co-cultured cell derived extracellular matrix incorporated porous electrospun scaffold

Abstract

Implants for bone regeneration to remedy segmental bone defects, osteomyelitis, necrotic bone tissue and non-union fractures have worldwide appeal. Although biomaterials offer most of the advantages by improving tissue growth but developments are more commonly achieved via biologically derived molecules. To aid site specific bone tissue regeneration by synthetic scaffold, cell derived extracellular matrix (ECM) can be a crucial component. In this study, co-cultured bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell and osteoblastic cells derived ECM incorporated electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) membranes were assessed for bone tissue engineering application. The preliminary experimental details indicated that, co-culture of cells supported enhanced in vitro ECM synthesis followed by successful deposition of osteoblastic ECM into electrospun membranes. The acellular samples revealed retention of ECM related biomacromolecules (collagen, glycosaminoglycan) and partial recovery of pores after decellularization. In vitro biocompatibility tests ensured improvement of proliferation and osteoblastic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells in decellularized ECM containing membrane (PCL-ECM) compared to bare membrane (PCL-B) which was further confirmed by osteogenic marker proteins expression analysis. The decellularized PCL-ECM membrane allowed great improvement of bone regeneration over the bare membrane (PCL-B) in 8 mm size critical sized rat skull defects at 2 months of post implantation. In short, the outcome of this study could be impactful in development and application of cell derived ECM based synthetic electrospun templates for bone tissue engineering application.

Keywords:

• Electrospun membrane
• extracellular matrix
• osteogenic potential
• bone regeneration

Disclosure statement

All the authors declare no conflicting interests.

Author’s contributions

Andrew Padalhin conceptualized the topic, planned-out the fabrication and in vivo experiments. Reiza Ventura and Boram Kim contributed equally to this work through material characterization in-vitro testing and are credited both as second authors. Chanmi Park conducted the immunoblotting experiment. Tamanna Sultana contributed analysis, organizing the experimental data, writing, reviewing and editing of final manuscript. Prof. Byong-Taek Lee provided resources with supervision. All authors contributed to the analysis, validation and interpretation of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2015R1A6A1A03032522) and Soonchunhyang University, South Korea.