[CMDBS, functional analogs of sulfate heparanes, used as osseous cicatrizing agents]

Several Heparin-Binding Growth Factors (HBGFs) are known to play an important role in bone repair. When osseous tissue is injured, an important increase of protease activities and a massive release of HBGFs occur. The local increase in HBGFs content at the wounded site, produced by a release of this factors from cells implicated in haemostasis and inflammatory reaction and from extracellular matrix associated heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs), seems to be a crucial step in bone healing. The proteolysis associated with the tissue injury probably limits the growth factors activities at the wound site. In order to define the bone healing potential of molecules that would be able to protect HBGFs against proteolytic activation, we studied the effect of derived dextrans, named carboxymethyl-benzylamide-sulfonated dextrans (CMDBS), behaving as heparan like molecules, in 5 mm in diameter skull trepaned defects in young adult rats. In this model CMDBS induced an important bone regeneration in a dose dependent manner while controls were not repaired. In CMDBS treated animals the defects were repaired and contained a tissue of normal appearance; in several treated animals the sagittal suture, initially removed by the trephination, was restored. This remarkable bone healing potential of CMDBS may result from the capacity to protect the endogenous HBGFs from proteolysis and to modulate their biological activities, in a similar manner to that observed for fibroblast growth factors and HSPGs. CMDBS represent a new form of bone healing agents, which have the advantage of being produced by a controlled chemical synthesis, and of avoiding the use of exogenous growth factors because of their capacity to enhance the bone healing potential of the endogenous growth factors.