A Copolymer Scaffold Functionalized with Nanodiamond Particles Enhances Osteogenic Metabolic Activity and Bone Regeneration

Abstract

Functionalizing polymer scaffolds with nanodiamond particles (nDPs) has pronounced effect on the surface properties, such as improved wettability, an increased active area and binding sites for cellular attachment and adhesion, and increased ability to immobilize biomolecules by physical adsorption. This study aims to evaluate the effect of poly(l-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) (poly(LLA-co-CL)) scaffolds, functionalized with nDPs, on bone regeneration in a rat calvarial critical size defect. Poly(LLA-co-CL) scaffolds functionalized with nDPs are also compared with pristine scaffolds with reference to albumin adsorption and seeding efficiency of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs). Compared with pristine scaffolds, the experimental scaffolds exhibit a reduction in albumin adsorption and a significant increase in the seeding efficiency of BMSCs (p = 0.027). In the calvarial defects implanted with BMSC-seeded poly(LLA-co-CL)/nDPs scaffolds, live imaging at 12 weeks discloses a significant increase in osteogenic metabolic activity (p = 0.016). Microcomputed tomography, confirmed by histological data, reveals a substantial increase in bone volume (p = 0.021). The results show that compared with conventional poly(LLA-co-CL) scaffolds those functionalized with nDPs promote osteogenic metabolic activity and mineralization capacity. It is concluded that poly(LLA-co-CL) composite matrices functionalized with nDPs enhance osteoconductivity and therefore warrant further study as potential scaffolding material for bone tissue engineering.

Immobilization of Detonation Nanodiamonds on Macroscopic Surfaces

“…Recently, ND-modified, polymer-based bio-scaffolds are discussed for clinical applications. Yassin et al showed an increased seeding efficiency of bone marrow stromal cells, due to the nanotopographical features of NDs in copolymer bio-scaffolds [51]. It has been shown that immobilized and protein functionalized NDs have improved in vivo vascularization and bone formation [52].…”

Controlling Cell Behavior through the Design of Biomaterial Surfaces: A Focus on Surface Modification Techniques

“…The results showed that significant changes in the nanodiamond particle–water solution in the vapor phase in vacuum chamber caused distribution of NPs onto surface of scaffold. They found that substrate surface decoration with nanodiamond particles not only promoted mineralization capability and osteogenic metabolic activities but also hampered protein adsorption and subsequently fibrous capsule formation and progression of chronic inflammation via improvement of the surface hydrophilicity . One of the advantages of using the NP assembly method for modification of scaffolds is that it increases the roughness and hydrophilicity of surface, thereby increasing affinity of adhesive molecules onto the surface of substrates .…”

Hybrid scaffolds of Mg alloy mesh reinforced polymer/extracellular matrix composite for critical-sized calvarial defect reconstruction

“…The most commonly utilized biodegradable polymers include PLGA (Gentile, Chiono, Carmagnola, & Hatton, ), poly( l ‐lactic acid) (Huang et al, ), poly(ε‐caprolactone) (Wongsupa, Nuntanaranont, Kamolmattayakul, & Thuaksuban, ), and copolymers with these common polyesters (Wang et al, ). One of the effective strategies to improve the in vitro and in vivo osteogenesis of polymeric scaffolds has been the incorporation of bioactive reagents for controlled delivery to the defect region (Yassin et al, ). Most commonly, bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs, and BMP‐2 in particular; Fan et al, ; Huang et al, ) and peptide derivates (Lee et al, ) have shown effective bone regeneration in many studies, and this concept has translated to clinical utilization in some settings (Govender et al, ; Valentin‐Opran, Wozney, Csimma, Lilly, & Riedel, ).…”