Comparative study of porous hydroxyapatite/chitosan and whitlockite/chitosan scaffolds for bone regeneration in calvarial defects

Abstract

Ding Zhou,1,* Chao Qi,2,* Yi-Xuan Chen,1 Ying-Jie Zhu,2 Tuan-Wei Sun,2 Feng Chen,2 Chang-Qing Zhang1 1Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 2State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Hydroxyapatite (HAP; Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) and whitlockite (WH; Ca18Mg2(HPO4)2(PO4)12) are widely utilized in bone repair because they are the main components of hard tissues such as bones and teeth. In this paper, we synthesized HAP and WH hollow microspheres by using creatine phosphate disodium salt as an organic phosphorus source in aqueous solution through microwave-assisted hydrothermal method. Then, we prepared HAP/chitosan and WH/chitosan composite membranes to evaluate their biocompatibility in vitro and prepared porous HAP/chitosan and WH/chitosan scaffolds by freeze drying to compare their effects on bone regeneration in calvarial defects in a rat model. The experimental results indicated that the WH/chitosan composite membrane had a better biocompatibility, enhancing proliferation and osteogenic differentiation ability of human mesenchymal stem cells than HAP/chitosan. Moreover, the porous WH/chitosan scaffold can significantly promote bone regeneration in calvarial defects, and thus it is more promising for applications in tissue engineering such as calvarial repair compared to porous HAP/chitosan scaffold. Keywords: hydroxyapatite, whitlockite, chitosan, osteogenic differentiation, rat critical calvarial defect, tissue engineering

Keywords

• hydroxyapatite
• whitlockite
• chitosan
• osteogenic differentiation
• rat critical calvaria defect
• tissue engineering