Abstract
Liquid marbles represented a significant advance in the manipulation of fluids as they used particle films to confine liquid drops, creating a robust and durable soft solid. We exploit this technology to engineering a bioactive hydrogel marble (BHM). Specifically, pristine bioactive glass nanoparticles were chemically tuned to produce biocompatible hydrophobic bioactive glass nanoparticles (H-BGNPs) that shielded a gelatin-based bead. The designed BHM shell promoted the growth of a bone-like apatite layer upon immersion in a physiological environment. The fabrication process allowed the efficient incorporation of drugs and cells into the engineered structure. The BHM provided a simultaneously controlled release of distinct encapsulated therapeutic model molecules. Moreover, the BHM sustained cell encapsulation in a 3D environment as demonstrated by an excellent in vitro stability and cytocompatibility. The engineered structures also showed potential to regulate a pre-osteoblastic cell line into osteogenic commitment. Overall, these hierarchical nanostructured and functional marbles revealed a high potential for future applications in bone tissue engineering.
Highlights
Liquid marbles represented a significant advance in the manipulation of fluids as they used particle films to confine liquid drops, creating a robust and durable soft solid
Due to the changes in bioactive glass nanoparticles (BGNPs) surface chemistry by fluorosilanization, the initial hydrophilic nanoparticle became hydrophobic with a water contact angle of 141° ± 1.3° (Fig. 1c,d)
The desirable hydrophobicity finds parallelism in nature as it could be ascribed to these aspects: (1) hydrophobic bioactive glass nanoparticles (H-BGNPs) were organized to create a rough surface mimicking the hierarchal structure of lotus leaf; (2) the grafted PFDTS served as the chemical structure to mimic botanical wax of lotus leaf to gain low surface free energy[31]
Summary
Liquid marbles represented a significant advance in the manipulation of fluids as they used particle films to confine liquid drops, creating a robust and durable soft solid We exploit this technology to engineering a bioactive hydrogel marble (BHM). There is still a need for a technology that enables cells to grow in three dimensions in their native state without the restriction of common scaffolds, mimicking their niche and closing the gap with the cells behavior in the in vivo scenario[19,20] Bearing this in mind, we envisage a bio-functional shell formed by bioactive glass nanoparticles (BGNPs) for bone regeneration. Illustration of the synthesis of the novel H-BGNPs through nature-inspired chemistry: the theoretical grafting of PFDTS molecules on the BGNPs surface. (b) X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis of the nanoparticles before and after grafting by PFDTS (H-BGNPs), which confirmed the chemical functionalization
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