Human bone marrow derived stem cell differentiation on 3D printed bioactive glass scaffolds
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Bioactive glass particles have previously been found to stimulate new bone growth in vivo and have a long clinical track record. The effect of bioactive glasses on human bone marrow derived stromal cells (hBMSCs) has not been clearly ascertained previously. Recently, 3D printed scaffolds of the ICIE16 glass composition (49.46 mol% SiO2, 36.6 mol% CaO, 6.6 mol% Na2O, 6.6 mol% K2O, 1.07 mol% P2O5) were found to produce high quality bone ingrowth in vivo in a rabbit model. This composition was chosen because it can be sintered into scaffolds without crystallisation. Here, we cultured hBMSCs on the 3D printed ICIE16 scaffolds to determine whether the scaffolds can support cell growth and osteogenic differentiation in vitro, with and without the presence of osteogenic supplements. This was compared to a control of culture media containing dissolution products of the bioactive glass scaffold. Our hypothesis was that the cells cultured on the scaffolds would undergo more osteogenic differentiation than cells cultured in media containing only the dissolution ions of the scaffolds, even without osteogenic supplements. hBMSCs cultured on ICIE16 scaffolds significantly increased expression of osteogenic differentiation and matrix formation markers, including Runx 2, Col1a1, Osteopontin, Osteocalcin and Alkaline Phosphatase, in comparison to monolayer cultures in basal conditions with bioactive glass dissolution products, at all time points up to 6 weeks. Six weeks was chosen as it is the time scale for bone fracture healing. The presence of osteogenic supplements appeared to have synergetic effects with 3D scaffolds, especially during early stages of osteogenic differentiation (week 2 and 4). By week 6, there was no significant difference in the expression of osteogenic markers by hBMSCs cultured on ICE16 scaffolds with and without osteogenic supplements. These findings support our hypothesis and highlight that the 3D structure and the dissolution of ICIE16 bioactive glass ionic products both independently influence osteogenic differentiation of hBMSCs.
Date Issued
2025-12-01
Date Acceptance
2025-07-05
Citation
Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, 2025, 36 (1)
ISSN
0957-4530
Publisher
Springer
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine
Volume
36
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
69
Date Publish Online
2025-08-27