BONE TISSUE ENGINEERING: EFFECT OF COMPRESSION ON GROWTH PATTERNS REVEALED BY μCT MONITORING

Abstract

Custom-made culture chambers were kept inside an incubator. For mechanical compression the chambers were taken out of the incubator and mounted into a custom-made mechanical stimulation unit. For time-lapsed in situ imaging the culture chambers were placed inside a μCT desktop system under sterile conditions. In this way, bone morphological parameters of individual constructs could be monitored throughout the culture period. Each culture chamber (n=3) hosted one loaded sample and one non-loaded control sample, which were exposed to the same environment except for the mechanical stimulation. Human mesenchymal stem cells were cultured on silk fibroin scaffolds in osteogenic medium (7mM -GP, 50μg/ml ascorbic acid, 10nM Dexamethasone, 1μg/ml BMP-2) for 42 days in the system. The samples in the loaded group were compressed by 5% of their height. Loading frequencies were 10 Hz from days 14-24 and 6 Hz from days 25-42.