A High-Adhesive Lysine-Cyclic RGD Peptide Designed for Selective Cell Retention Technology

Cell adhesion is an important property of biomaterials used in selective cell retention (SCR) technology, which fabricates bone grafts rapidly in clinical settings. This could be improved by physical and biologic manipulations. To facilitate retention of the cells on the scaffold, especially osteoprogenitors from bone marrow in the convenient SCR procedure, a lysine-cyclic RGD (LcRGD) peptide was here designed to coordinate positively charged amino acids and the RGD sequence to enhance the adhesion performance of the scaffold. Demineralized bone matrix (DBM) is an important therapeutic resource, but its cell adhesion ability and osteoinductive capacity are low because of its processing. These capabilities can be increased to enhance the performance of DBM when used in SCR technology. Here, LcRGD peptide was used to modify DBM and produce a DBM/LcRGD composite. This composite exhibited enhanced adhesion performance on cultured human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells and retained more osteoprogenitors from bone marrow than other materials did. The DBM/LcRGD composite displayed a preferable osteoinduction in vitro and osteogenic capacity in vivo. Thus, LcRGD peptide as a commendable modifier of DBM applied in SCR technology can improve bone transplantation.