Abstract
Bone regeneration is a complex, well-organized physiological process of bone formation observed during normal fracture healing and involved in continuous remodeling throughout adult life. An ideal medical device for bone regeneration requires interconnected pores within the device to allow for penetration of blood vessels and cells, enabling material biodegradation and bone ingrowth. Additional mandatory characteristics include an excellent resorption rate, a 3D structure similar to natural bone, biocompatibility, and customizability to multiple patient-specific geometries combined with adequate mechanical strength. Therefore, endless silk fibers were spun from native silk solution isolated from silkworm larvae and functionalized with osteoconductive bioceramic materials. In addition, transgenic silkworms were generated to functionalize silk proteins with human platelet-derived growth factor (hPDGF). Both, PDGF-silk and bioceramic modified silk were then assembled into 3D textile implants using an additive manufacturing approach. Textile implants were characterized in terms of porosity, compressive strength, and cyclic load. In addition, osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells was evaluated. Silk fiber-based 3D textile implants showed good cytocompatibility and stem cells cultured on bioceramic material functionalized silk implants were differentiating into bone cells. Thus, functionalized 3D interconnected porous textile scaffolds were shown to be promising biomaterials for bone regeneration.
Highlights
Critical size bone defects can be caused by trauma, tumor resection, reconstructive surgery, congenital malformations, and infections [1]
Samples of silk fibroin isolated from four different Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) transgenic silkworm batches were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), and the presence of human PDGF within the silk fibroin was detected by western blotting using an antibody against human PDGF
silk fibers (Silk) fibroin of at least 50 silkworm larvae was pooled per batch
Summary
Critical size bone defects can be caused by trauma, tumor resection, reconstructive surgery, congenital malformations, and infections [1]. For the treatment of such bone defects autologous bone grafts are the gold standard therapy [2]. The limitation of appropriate donor material and the additional surgical intervention to obtain the donor material with the associated co-morbidity at the donor site are limiting this therapeutic approach. Alternative strategies need to be developed to circumvent the shortage of bone tissue. One promising tool in bone defect therapies is tissue engineering. This comprises three steps: (1) design of a three dimensional scaffold
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