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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Piergiorgio GentileORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
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 particles (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 (1–3 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 membrane’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 membranes 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 biomaterial capable of promoting bone regeneration.
Author(s): Fernandes JS, Gentile P, Martinsa M, Nevesa NM, Miller C, Crawford A, Pires RA, Hatton PH, Reis RL
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Acta Biomaterialia
Year: 2016
Volume: 44
Pages: 168-177
Print publication date: 15/10/2016
Online publication date: 21/08/2016
Acceptance date: 20/08/2016
Date deposited: 03/11/2016
ISSN (print): 1742-7061
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2016.08.042
DOI: 10.1016/j.actbio.2016.08.042
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