Abstract
Sponges occur ubiquitously in the marine realm and in some deep-sea areas they dominate the benthic communities forming complex biogenic habitats – sponge grounds, aggregations, gardens and reefs. However, deep-sea sponges and sponge-grounds are still poorly investigated with regards to biotechnological potential in support of a Blue growth strategy. Under the scope of this study, five dominant North Atlantic deep-sea sponges, were characterized to elucidate promising applications in human health, namely for bone tissue engineering approaches. Geodia barretti (Gb), Geodia atlantica (Ga), Stelletta normani (Sn), Phakellia ventilabrum (Pv), and Axinella infundibuliformis (Ai), were morphologically characterized to assess macro and microstructural features, as well as chemical composition of the skeletons, using optical and scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and microcomputed tomography analyses. Moreover, compress tests were conducted to determine the mechanical properties of the skeletons. Results showed that all studied sponges have porous skeletons with porosity higher than 68%, pore size superior than 149 μm and higher interconnectivity (>96%), thus providing interesting models for the development of scaffolds for tissue engineering. Besides that, EDS analyses revealed that the chemical composition of sponges, pointed that demosponge skeletons are mainly constituted by carbon, silicon, sulfur, and oxygen combined mutually with organic and inorganic elements embedded its internal architecture that can be important features for promoting bone matrix quality and bone mineralization. Finally, the morphological, mechanical, and chemical characteristics here investigated unraveled the potential of deep-sea sponges as a source of biomaterials and biomimetic models envisaging tissue engineering applications for bone regeneration.
Highlights
Sponges are the earliest evolving animal lineage (Simion et al, 2017), which have diversified and adapted to a wide range of aquatic, marine and freshwater habitats (Hooper and Van Soest, 2002)
Geodia barretti (Gb), Geodia atlantica (Ga), Stelletta normani (Sn), Phakellia ventilabrum (Pv), and Axinella infundibuliformis (Ai) specimens were photographed and stereomicroscope images are represented in Figures 2, 3, illustrating their macrostructure with visualization of the relevant morphological features
Micro-CT images were obtained to examine the internal architecture of the specimens using a non-destructive and non-invasive method, to evaluate porosity, pore size and interconnectivity, as well as anisotropy properties
Summary
Sponges (phylum Porifera) are the earliest evolving animal lineage (Simion et al, 2017), which have diversified and adapted to a wide range of aquatic, marine and freshwater habitats (Hooper and Van Soest, 2002). Sponges have body features similar to anatomic bone structures, in that both are semi-rigid structures with an efficient high interconnected porous architecture composed by inorganic (biosilica or hydroxyapatite) and organic (spongin or collagen) components (Granito et al, 2017) Regarding their morphology, sponges are relatively simple with different cell types specialized in particular biological functions, but not organized into tissues. The original form of the sponge architectures has been investigated as potential scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, as in an effort to mimic native extracellular matrix, feasibility biomatrices and prompting the self-sustaining tissues support This capability of scaffolding properties is mainly inspired firstly in the hierarchical design; one of the natural pre-designed structure adjusting it for a novel purpose addressing specific clinical challenges related to the aspects that promote the natural cycle of regeneration process. Non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis tests, following Dunn’s multiple comparisons were used for determination of significance level with p-value less than 0.05 (p < 0.05) being considered statistically significant
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