title: Xylan hemicellulose improves chitosan hydrogel for bone tissue regeneration.
abstract: The hemicellulose xylan, which has immunomodulatory effects, has been combined with chitosan to form a composite hydrogel to improve the healing of bone fractures. This thermally responsive and injectable hydrogel, which is liquid at room temperature and gels at physiological temperature, improves the response of animal host tissue compared with similar pure chitosan hydrogels in tissue engineering models. The composite hydrogel was placed in a subcutaneous model where the composite hydrogel is replaced by host tissue within 1 week, much earlier than chitosan hydrogels. A tibia fracture model in mice showed that the composite encourages major remodeling of the fracture callus in less than 4 weeks. A non-union fracture model in rat femurs was used to demonstrate that the composite hydrogel allows bone regeneration and healing of defects that with no treatment are unhealed after 6 weeks. These results suggest that the xylan/chitosan composite hydrogel is a suitable bone graft substitute able to aid in the repair of large bone defects.
authors: Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Virginia, PO Box 800374, Charlottesville, VA, 22908, USA.
authors: Joshua R
authors: JR
authors: Bush
authors: Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Virginia, PO Box 800374, Charlottesville, VA, 22908, USA.
authors: Haixiang
authors: H
authors: Liang
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Virginia, PO Box 800359, Charlottesville, VA, 22908, USA.
authors: Molly
authors: M
authors: Dickinson
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0363, USA.
authors: Edward A
authors: EA
authors: Botchwey
keywords: bone; hemicellulose; hydrogel; regenerative medicine; xylan