Ice-templated structures for biomedical tissue repair: From physics to final scaffolds

Ice-templating techniques, including freeze-drying and freeze casting, are extremely versatile and can be used with a variety of materials systems. The process relies on the freezing of a water based solution. During freezing, ice nucleates within the solution and concentrates the solute in the regions between the growing crystals. Once the ice is removed via sublimation, the solute remains in a porous structure, which is a negative of the ice. As the final structure of the ice relies on the freezing of the solution, the variables which influence ice nucleation and growth alter the structure of ice-templated scaffolds. Nucleation, the initial step of freezing, can be altered by the type and concentration of solutes within the solution, as well as the set cooling rate before freezing. After nucleation, crystal growth and annealing processes, such as Ostwald ripening, determine the features of the final scaffold. Both crystal growth and annealing are sensitive to many factors including the set freezing temperature and solutes. The porous structures created using ice-templating allow scaffolds to be used for many diverse applications, from microfluidics to biomedical tissue engineering. Within the field of tissue engineering, scaffold structure can influence cellular behavior, and is thus critical for determining the biological stimulus supplied by the scaffold. The research focusing on controlling the ice-templated structure serves as a model for how other ice-templating systems might be tailored, to expand the applications of ice-templated structures to their full potential.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Newton Trust, and ERC Advanced Grant No. 320598 3D-E. A.H. holds a Daphne Jackson Fellowship funded by the University of Cambridge.Copyright 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Reviews,1, 021301(2014) and may be found at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apr2/1/2/10.1063/1.4871083

Ionic solutes impact collagen scaffold bioactivity.

The structure of ice-templated collagen scaffolds is sensitive to many factors. By adding 0.5 wt% of sodium chloride or sucrose to collagen slurries, scaffold structure could be tuned through changes in ice growth kinetics and interactions of the solute and collagen. With ionic solutes (sodium chloride) the entanglements of the collagen molecule decreased, leading to fibrous scaffolds with increased pore size and decreased attachment of chondrocytes. With non-ionic solutes (sucrose) ice growth was slowed, leading to significantly reduced pore size and up-regulated cell attachment. This highlights the large changes in structure and biological function stimulated by solutes in ice-templating systems.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Newton Trust, NIHR, and ERC Advanced Grant 320598 3D-E. A.H. holds a Daphne Jackson Fellowship funded by the University of Cambridge. Also, the authors thank Dr. S. Butler for help with the rheological measurements.This is the accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10856-015-5457-8

The effect of particle size on the in vivo degradation of poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide)/α-tricalcium phosphate micro- and nanocomposites.

UNLABELLED: This paper reports the effect of particle size within a resorbable composite on the in vivo degradation rate and host response. Resorbable composites based on poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) reinforced with tricalcium phosphate (TCP) have shown suitable degradation, biological and mechanical properties for bone repair. Composites with nano-sized TCP particles degrade more homogenously in vitro than equivalent composites with micro-sized particles. In this study, PLGA and PLGA/TCP composites containing micro- or nano-sized α-TCP particles were implanted into an ovine distal femoral condyle defect and harvested at 6, 12, 18 and 24weeks. An intimate interface was observed between the new bone tissue and degrading implants. Visual scoring of histological images and semi-automated segmentation of X-ray images were used to quantify implant degradation and the growth of new bone tissue in the implant site. Bone growth into the implant site occurred at a similar rate for both composites and the PLGA control. However, the in vivo degradation rate of the nanocomposite was slower than that of the microcomposite and consequently more closely matched the rate of bone growth. For the first 6weeks, the rate of in vivo degradation matched that of in vitro degradation, but lagged significantly at longer time points. These results point to the potential use of ceramic particle size in controlling composite degradation whilst maintaining good bone formation. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: This paper concerns degradable composites for orthopaedic application. The effect of particle size on implant degradation in vivo is not yet well characterised and these results give the first opportunity to directly compare in vitro and in vivo degradation rates for composites with micro- and nano-sized particles. This type of data is vital for the validation of models of composite degradation behaviour, which will lead to the design and manufacture of composites with a tailored, predictable degradation profile. The trainable segmentation tool can be used for future studies where X-rays of partially degraded implants (which have complicated greyscales and morphologies) need to be quantified without bias.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from EPSRC grant: DT/E005233/1 (TP/5/REG/6/I/HO106A/DT/E006469/1). S M Bennett is grateful for sponsorship from Lucideon Ltd. and an EPSRC Doctoral Training Account grant. SW is grateful to Ms. Charlotte Fay von Karsa, for funding his Ph.D. studies. XCZ gratefully acknowledges funding from a Royal Society Industrial Fellowship. Dr RA Brooks gratefully acknowledges funding from the National Institute of Health Research.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2016.08.046

Natural Biomaterials for Cardiac Tissue Engineering: A Highly Biocompatible Solution.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) constitute a major fraction of the current major global diseases and lead to about 30% of the deaths, i.e., 17.9 million deaths per year. CVD include coronary artery disease (CAD), myocardial infarction (MI), arrhythmias, heart failure, heart valve diseases, congenital heart disease, and cardiomyopathy. Cardiac Tissue Engineering (CTE) aims to address these conditions, the overall goal being the efficient regeneration of diseased cardiac tissue using an ideal combination of biomaterials and cells. Various cells have thus far been utilized in pre-clinical studies for CTE. These include adult stem cell populations (mesenchymal stem cells) and pluripotent stem cells (including autologous human induced pluripotent stem cells or allogenic human embryonic stem cells) with the latter undergoing differentiation to form functional cardiac cells. The ideal biomaterial for cardiac tissue engineering needs to have suitable material properties with the ability to support efficient attachment, growth, and differentiation of the cardiac cells, leading to the formation of functional cardiac tissue. In this review, we have focused on the use of biomaterials of natural origin for CTE. Natural biomaterials are generally known to be highly biocompatible and in addition are sustainable in nature. We have focused on those that have been widely explored in CTE and describe the original work and the current state of art. These include fibrinogen (in the context of Engineered Heart Tissue, EHT), collagen, alginate, silk, and Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). Amongst these, fibrinogen, collagen, alginate, and silk are isolated from natural sources whereas PHAs are produced via bacterial fermentation. Overall, these biomaterials have proven to be highly promising, displaying robust biocompatibility and, when combined with cells, an ability to enhance post-MI cardiac function in pre-clinical models. As such, CTE has great potential for future clinical solutions and hence can lead to a considerable reduction in mortality rates due to CVD

Detection of myxoma viruses encoding a defective M135R gene from clinical cases of myxomatosis; possible implications for the role of the M135R protein as a virulence factor

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Myxoma virus is a member of the <it>Poxviridae </it>and causes disease in European rabbits. Laboratory confirmation of the clinical disease, which occurs in the autumn of most years in Denmark, has been achieved previously using antigen ELISA and electron microscopy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An unusually large number of clinically suspected cases of myxomatosis were observed in Denmark during 2007. Myxoma virus DNA was detected, using a new real time PCR assay which targets the M029L gene, in over 70% of the clinical samples submitted for laboratory confirmation. Unexpectedly, further analysis revealed that a high proportion of these viral DNA preparations contained a frame-shift mutation within the M135R gene that has previously been identified as a virulence factor. This frame-shift mutation results in expression of a greatly truncated product. The same frame-shift mutation has also been found recently within an avirulent strain of myxoma virus (6918). However, three other frame-shift mutations found in this strain (in the genes M009L, M036L and M148R) were not shared with the Danish viruses but a single nucleotide deletion in the M138R/M139R intergenic region was a common feature.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>It appears that expression of the full-length myxoma virus M135R protein is not required for virulence in rabbits. Hence, the frame-shift mutation in the M135R gene in the nonpathogenic 6918 virus strain is not sufficient to explain the attenuation of this myxoma virus but one/some of the other frame-shift mutations alone or in conjunction with one/some of the thirty two amino acid substitutions must also contribute. The real time PCR assay for myxoma virus is a useful diagnostic tool for laboratory confirmation of suspected cases of myxomatosis.</p

Molecular characterisation of virulence graded field isolates of myxoma virus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Myxoma virus </it>(MV) has been endemic in Europe since shortly after its deliberate release in France in 1952. While the emergence of more resistant hosts and more transmissible and attenuated virus is well documented, there have been relatively few studies focused on the sequence changes incurred by the virus as it has adapted to its new host. In order to identify regions of variability within the MV genome to be used for phylogenetic studies and to try to investigate causes of MV strain attenuation we have molecularly characterised nine strains of MV isolated in Spain between the years 1992 and 1995 from wide ranging geographic locations and which had been previously graded for virulence by experimental infection of rabbits.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The findings reported here show the analysis of 16 genomic regions accounting for approximately 10% of the viral genomes. Of the 20 genes analysed 5 (M034L, M069L, M071L, M130R and M135R) were identical in all strains and 1 (M122R) contained only a single point mutation in an individual strain. Four genes (M002L/R, M009L, M036L and M017L) showed insertions or deletions that led to disruption of the ORFs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings presented here provide valuable tools for strain differentiation and phylogenetic studies of MV isolates and some clues as to the reasons for virus attenuation in the field.</p

Altering crystal growth and annealing in ice-templated scaffolds.

The potential applications of ice-templating porous materials are constantly expanding, especially as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Ice-templating, a process utilizing ice nucleation and growth within an aqueous solution, consists of a cooling stage (before ice nucleation) and a freezing stage (during ice formation). While heat release during cooling can change scaffold isotropy, the freezing stage, where ice crystals grow and anneal, determines the final size of scaffold features. To investigate the path of heat flow within collagen slurries during solidification, a series of ice-templating molds were designed with varying the contact area with the heat sink, in the form of the freeze drier shelf. Contact with the heat sink was found to be critical in determining the efficiency of the release of latent heat within the perspex molds. Isotropic collagen scaffolds were produced with pores which ranged from 90 μm up to 180 μm as the contact area decreased. In addition, low-temperature ice annealing was observed within the structures. After 20 h at -30 °C, conditions which mimic storage prior to lyophilization, scaffold architecture was observed to coarsen significantly. In future, ice-templating molds should consider not only heat conduction during the cooling phase of solidification, but the effects of heat flow during ice growth and annealing.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Newton Trust, and ERC Advanced Grant 320598 3D-E. A.H. held a Daphne Jackson Fellowship funded by the University of Cambridge.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9343-