Chemically and physically cross-linked polyvinyl alcohol-borosilicate gel hybrid scaffolds for bone regeneration

The composite scaffolds of bioactive glasses and polymers are often used in bone regeneration which could improve the stiffness, compressive strength and bioactivity of polymers while maintaining the osteoconductivity and osteoinductivity of bioactive glasses. But due to complicated situations and limitations of compositing process, the prepared composite materials have low uniformity and obvious phase separation, leading to problems such as poor mechanical properties and inferior new bone formation capacity. In this paper, a modified sol-gel processing technique was used to realize the homogeneous inorganic-organic composites. After hydrolysis of the metal alkoxide, the sol was mixed with the aqueous solution of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and through gelation and chemical reaction, the mixture was solidified into the inorganic-organic composite hydrogel. The composites showed as a uniform single phase with interpenetrating networks of PVA gel and borosilicate gel (BG) that chemically and physically interacted at the scale of molecular or nanometer, therefore PVA-BG hybrids were obtained. When immersed in phosphate-buffered saline, the PVA-BG hybrid-derived scaffolds released beneficial ions into the medium and converted to hydroxyapatite. The scaffolds were not toxic to the rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (rBMSCs), and supported rBMSCs proliferation. Furthermore, the alkaline phosphatase activity of the rBMSCs and the expression levels of osteogenic-related genes (alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin and runt-related transcription factor 2) increased significantly with increasing amount of BG in the hybrid scaffolds. Finally, the bone defect repair results of critical-sized femoral condyle defect rat model demonstrated that PVA-BG hybrid scaffolds could enhance bone regeneration compared with PVA scaffolds. The results suggested that PVA-BG hybrid scaffolds may be a promising biomaterial for bone regeneration.