Mesenchymal stem cells are sensitive to changes in feature height, order and spacing. We had previously noted that there was an inverse relationship between osteoinductive potential and feature height on 15-, 55- and 90 nm-high titania nanopillars, with 15 nm-high pillars being the most effective substrate at inducing osteogenesis of human mesenchymal stem cells. The osteoinductive effect was s...

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) have to be applied at high concentrations to stimulate bone healing. The limited therapeutic efficacy may be due to the local presence of BMP antagonists such as Noggin. Thus, inhibiting BMP antagonists is an attractive therapeutic option. We hypothesized that the engineered BMP2 variant L51P stimulates osteoinduction by antagonizing Noggin-mediated inhibition ...

Understanding the molecular events that regulate osteoblast differentiation is essential for the development of effective approaches to bone regeneration. In this study, we analysed the osteoinductive properties of extracellular calcium in bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell (BM-MSC) differentiation. We cultured BM-MSCs in 3D gelatin scaffolds with Ca2+ and BMP-2 as osteoinductive agents....

Titanium and its alloys are widely used in dental implantology due to their low density, high resistance to corrosion, good mechanical properties and its biocompatibility [1]. However, sometimes patients are considered unsuitable for these interventions due to different reasons, some of them related to poor bone regeneration capacity. A better bone growth and therefore, a high implant osseointe...

Vascular calcification is frequently found already in early stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients and is associated with high cardiovascular risk. The process of vascular calcification is not considered a passive phenomenon but involves, at least in part, phenotypical transformation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Following exposure to excessive extracellular phosphate concen...

The discovery of osteoinductivity of calcium phosphate (Ca-P) ceramics has set an enduring paradigm of conferring biological regenerative activity to materials with carefully designed structural characteristics. The unique phase composition and porous structural features of osteoinductive Ca-P ceramics allow it to interact with signaling molecules and extracellular matrices in the host system, ...

Biomaterials can be endowed with biologically instructive properties by changing basic parameters such as elasticity and surface texture. However, translation from in vitro proof of concept to clinical application is largely missing. Porous calcium phosphate ceramics are used to treat small bone defects but in general do not induce stem cell differentiation, which is essential for regenerating ...

Three-dimensional (3D) cell constructs are expected to provide osteoinductive materials to develop cell-based therapies for bone regeneration. The proliferation and spontaneous aggregation capability of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) thus prompted us to fabricate a scaffold-free iPSC construct as a transplantation vehicle. Embryoid bodies of mouse gingival fibroblast-derived iPSCs (GF-i...

Osteogenic differentiation of various adult stem cell populations such as neural crest-derived stem cells is of great interest in the context of bone regeneration. Ideally, exogenous differentiation should mimic an endogenous differentiation process, which is partly mediated by topological cues. To elucidate the osteoinductive potential of porous substrates with different pore diameters (30 nm,...

Poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) has received considerable attention in bone tissue engineering. However, the lack of osteoinductive ability of PCL limits its application. The aim of this study was to directly attach bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) to PCL scaffolds by a crosslinking conjugation method and to investigate whether the bound BMP-2 maintained bioactivity in vitro. Immunofluorescent s...