Bone Regeneration in Rat Calvarial Defects Implanted with Fibrous Scaffolds Composed of a Mixture of Silicate and Borate Bioactive Glasses

Abstract

Previous studies have evaluated the capacity of porous scaffolds composed of a single bioactive glass to regenerate bone. In the present study, scaffolds composed of a mixture of two different bioactive glasses (silicate 13-93 and borate 13-93B3) were created and evaluated for their response to osteogenic MLO-A5 cells in vitro and their capacity to regenerate bone in rat calvarial defects in vivo. The scaffolds, which have similar microstructures (porosity = 58-67%) and contain 0, 25, 50 and 100 wt.% 13-93B3 glass, were fabricated by thermally bonding randomly oriented short fibers. The silicate 13-93 scaffolds showed a better capacity to support cell proliferation and alkaline phosphatase activity than the scaffolds containing borate 13-93B3 fibers. The amount of new bone formed in the defects implanted with the 13-93 scaffolds at 12 weeks was 31%, compared to values of 25, 17 and 20%, respectively, for the scaffolds containing 25, 50 and 100% 13-93B3 glass. The amount of new bone formed in the 13-93 scaffolds was significantly higher than in the scaffolds containing 50 and 100% 13-93B3 glass. While the 13-93 fibers were only partially converted to hydroxyapatite at 12 weeks, the 13-93B3 fibers were fully converted and formed a tubular morphology. Scaffolds composed of an optimized mixture of silicate and borate bioactive glasses could provide the requisite architecture to guide bone regeneration combined with a controllable degradation rate that could be beneficial for bone and tissue healing.

Department(s)

Materials Science and Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Bioactive glass; Bone regeneration; Mineralization; Rat calvarial defect model; alkaline phosphatase; boric acid; glass; hydroxyapatite; silicate; tissue scaffold

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1742-7061

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2013 Elsevier BV, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2013

Link to Full Text

Share

 
COinS