title: Bone regeneration in strong porous bioactive glass (13-93) scaffolds with an oriented microstructure implanted in rat calvarial defects.
abstract: There is a need for synthetic bone graft substitutes to repair large bone defects resulting from trauma, malignancy and congenital diseases. Bioactive glass has attractive properties as a scaffold material but factors that influence its ability to regenerate bone in vivo are not well understood. In the present work, the ability of strong porous scaffolds of 13-93 bioactive glass with an oriented microstructure to regenerate bone was evaluated in vivo using a rat calvarial defect model. Scaffolds with an oriented microstructure of columnar pores (porosity=50%; pore diameter=50-150 μm) showed mostly osteoconductive bone regeneration, and new bone formation, normalized to the available pore area (volume) of the scaffolds, increased from 37% at 12 weeks to 55% at 24 weeks. Scaffolds of the same glass with a trabecular microstructure (porosity=80%; pore width=100-500 μm), used as the positive control, showed bone regeneration in the pores of 25% and 46% at 12 and 24 weeks, respectively. The brittle mechanical response of the as-fabricated scaffolds changed markedly to an elastoplastic response in vivo at both implantation times. These results indicate that both groups of 13-93 bioactive glass scaffolds could potentially be used to repair large bone defects, but scaffolds with the oriented microstructure could also be considered for the repair of loaded bone.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Bone and Tissue Repair and Regeneration, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409, USA.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Mohamed N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Rahaman
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D001846:Bone Development; D005898:Glass; D008297:Male; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012038:Regeneration; D012886:Skull; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials