A New Gallium Releasing Composite Scaffold for Bone Tissue Engineering

VIVIANA S. MOURIÑO, ROSA SERRAO; PHILIPPA NEWBY; ALDO BOCCACCINI

Galway

Conferencia; Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-EU Chapter Meeting; 2010

Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-EU

Introduction Ga(III), a drug approved for clinical use, has been found to inhibit S. aureus. Alginates (ALG) are able to form gels with certain multivalent metal ions, such as Ga(III), which induce cross-linking of their guluronic residues. The above considerations prompted us to develop a novel multifunctional 3D 45S5 Bioglass® (BG) based scaffold for bone tissue engineering with the added value of incorporating a drug delivery function with bacteriostatic purpose, Ga(III), as a prophylaxis against possible infections following surgery.   Materials and Methods All reagents were purchased from Sigma, except for BG powder (gift of Dr I. Thompson, Kings College London, UK).  Scaffolds were fabricated using the foam replica technique. Ga(III) was added drop wise to the scaffold followed by an excess of ALG solution to coat the scaffold and cross-linked with Ga(III). Morphology features were observed by SEM and the presence of Ga(III) was confirmed by EDX. The structure of the coating was evaluated by FT-IR and XRD. The scaffolds were incubated in simulated body fluid (SBF) at 37°C for different times to evaluate bioactivity. The antibacteriostatic properties were investigated by using S. aureus (ATCC 29213) through the antimicrobial disk susceptibility test4. Differences were regarded statistically significant when p