An amphiphilic degradable polymer/hydroxyapatite composite with enhanced handling characteristics promotes osteogenic gene expression in bone marrow stromal cells
Electrospun polymer/hydroxyapatite (HA) composites combining biodegradability with osteoconductivity are attractive for skeletal tissue engineering applications. However, most biodegradable polymers such as poly(lactic acid) (PLA) are hydrophobic and do not blend with adequate interfacial adhesion with HA, compromising the structural homogeneity, mechanical integrity and biological performance of the composite. To overcome this challenge, we combined a hydrophilic polyethylene glycol (PEG) block with poly(d,l-lactic acid) to improve the adhesion of the degradable polymer with HA. The amphiphilic triblock copolymer PLA-PEG-PLA (PELA) improved the stability of HA-PELA suspension at 25wt.% HA content, which was readily electrospun into HA-PELA composite scaffolds with uniform fiber dimensions. HA-PELA was highly extensible (failure strain>200% vs. <40% for HA-PLA), superhydrophilic (∼0° water contact angle vs. >100° for HA-PLA), and exhibited an 8-fold storage modulus increase (unlike deterioration for HA-PLA) upon hydration, owing to the favorable interaction between HA and PEG. HA-PELA also better promoted osteochondral lineage commitment of bone marrow stromal cells in unstimulated culture and supported far more potent osteogenic gene expression upon induction than HA-PLA. We demonstrate that the chemical incorporation of PEG is an effective strategy to improve the performance of degradable polymer/HA composites for bone tissue engineering applications.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 November 2016.
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Altmetric has tracked 34,054,827 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
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