Self-assembled rosette nanotube/hydrogel composites for cartilage tissue engineering

Recently, hydrogels (alginate, agarose, polyethylene glycol, etc.) have been investigated as promising cartilage-healing materials. To further improve cell-material interactions or mechanical properties of such hydrogel scaffolds, many materials (such as ceramics or carbon nanotubes) have been added to produce composites with tailored properties. In this study, rosette nanotubes (RNTs, self-assembled nanotubes built from DNA base pairs), hydrogels, and cells (specifically, fibroblast-like type-B synoviocytes [SFB cells] and chondrocytes) were combined via a novel electrospinning technique to generate three-dimensional implantable scaffolds for cartilage repair. Importantly, results of this study showed that electrospun RNT/hydrogel composites improved both SFB cell and chondrocyte functions. RNT/hydrogel composites promoted SFB cell chondrogenic differentiation in 2 week culture experiments. Further, studies demonstrated that RNTs enhanced hydrogel adhesive strength to severed collagen. Results of this study thus provided a nanostructured scaffold that enhanced SFB cell adhesion, viability, and chondrogenic differentiation compared to nanosmooth hydrogels without RNTs. This study provided an alternative cartilage regenerative material derived from RNTs that could be directly electrospun into cartilage defects (with SFB cells and/or chondrocytes) to bond to severed collagen and promote cell adhesion, viability, and subsequent functions.