Reinforcement of poly-L-lactic acid electrospun membranes with strontium borosilicate bioactive glasses for bone tissue engineering

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, João S.
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Gentile, Piergiorgio, Martins, Margarida Isabel Barros Coelho, Neves, N. M., Miller, Cheryl, Crawford, Aileen, Pires, R. A., Hatton, Paul, Reis, R. L.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/42993
• topic: BM-MSCs; Mineralisation; Osteogenic differentiation; PLLA membranes; Strontium borosilicate glasses; Science & Technology

Herein, for the first time, we combined poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) with a strontium borosilicate bioactive glass (BBG-Sr) using electrospinning to fabricate a composite bioactive PLLA membrane loaded with 10% (w/w) of BBG-Sr glass par- ticles (PLLA-BBG-Sr). The composites were characterised by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and microcomputer tomography (μ-CT), and the results showed that we successfully fabricated smooth and uniform fibres (1â 3 μm in width) with a homogeneous distribution of BBG-Sr microparticles (<45 μm). Degradation studies (in phosphate buffered saline) demonstrated that the incorporation of BBG-Sr glass particles into the PLLA membranes increased their degradability and water uptake with a continuous release of cations. The addition of BBG-Sr glass particles enhanced the membraneâ s mechanical properties (69% higher Young modulus and 36% higher tensile strength). Furthermore, cellular in vitro evaluation using bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) demonstrated that PLLA-BBG-Sr mem- branes promoted the osteogenic differentiation of the cells as demonstrated by increased alkaline phosphatase activity and up-regulated osteogenic gene expression (Alpl, Sp7 and Bglap) in relation to PLLA alone. These results strongly suggest that the composite PLLA membranes reinforced with the BBG-Sr glass particles have potential as an effective biomater- ial capable of promoting bone regeneration.