Borocarbonitrides nanosheets engineered 3D-printed scaffolds for integrated strategy of osteosarcoma therapy and bone regeneration

Abstract

Recently, plenty of nanomaterials have demonstrated great promise for photothermal therapy of osteosarcoma. However, bioactive nanomaterials are still rare to function as nano-photothermal agents to thoroughly kill residual tumor cells and repair the bone defects caused by surgical removal of bone tumors. Herein, for the first time, two-dimensional (2D) borocarbonitrides (BCN) nanosheets were applied in the biomedicine to play multiple roles of photothermal agent for osteosarcoma therapy and promoter for bone regeneration. In this work, akermanite (Ca2MgSi2O7, AKT) bioceramic scaffolds with pore structure of ~320 μm were first fabricated by 3D printing technology. And then a novel bifunctional platform which was marked as BCN@AKT scaffolds, was further constructed by introducing BCN nanosheets as a functional coating on AKT scaffolds, which might be attributed to the interaction between BCN with negative potential with Ca ions sites in AKT scaffolds, and the hydrogen bonding between BCN and AKT scaffolds. Notably, the unique photothermal performance of BCN@AKT scaffolds for osteosarcoma therapy was achieved due to the strong light absorption property of BCN nanosheets. In addition, the abundant hydroxyl functional group (–OH) and boron (B) element on BCN nanosheets contributed to the promotion of bone regeneration, which confirmed by in situ mineralization ability, up-regulation of fibronectin (FN) protein and activation of BMP2 signaling pathway. Therefore, the BCN engineered 3D scaffolds suggested a great integrated strategy in tumor therapy and bone regeneration.