Bioactive impact of manuka honey and bone char incorporated into gelatin and chitosan cryogels in a rat calvarial fracture model

• Published in: Journal of biomedical materials research. Part B, Applied biomaterials Vol. 111; no. 10; pp. 1763 - 1774
• Main Authors: Robertson, E. M., Hixon, K. R., McBride‐Gagyi, S. H., Sell, S. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, USA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.10.2023; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Additives; Angiogenesis; Animal models; Animals; Autografts; Biocompatibility; Biological activity; Biomedical materials; Bone and Bones; bone char; Bone charcoal; Bone grafts; Bone growth; bone regeneration; Bones; Chitosan; Chitosan - chemistry; Chitosan - pharmacology; Comorbidity; Complications; Computed tomography; Cortical bone; cryogel; Cryogels - chemistry; Cryogels - pharmacology; Fractures; Gelatin; Gelatin - chemistry; Gelatin - pharmacology; Histology; Honey; Hydroxyapatite; manuka honey; Materials research; Materials science; Natural environment; osteoinductivity; rat fracture model; Rats; Regeneration; Regeneration (physiology); Scaffolds; Surgical equipment; Tissue engineering; Tissue Engineering - methods; Tissue Scaffolds - chemistry; X-Ray Microtomography; osteoinductivity; tissue engineering; cryogel; bone regeneration; rat fracture model; bone char; manuka honey
• DOI: 10.1002/jbm.b.35283
• ISSN: 1552-4973

Bone tissue engineered scaffolds are designed to mimic the natural environment for regeneration when typical healing is inhibited. Autografts are the current gold standard for treatment but are limited by available bone and supplementary surgical sites that broaden complications and comorbidities. Cryogels are an ideal scaffold in bone regeneration due to their mechanical integrity and marcoporous structure that elicits angiogenesis and subsequently new bone tissue formation. To aid in bioactivity and osteoinductivity, manuka honey (MH) and bone char (BC) were added to gelatin and chitosan cryogels (CG). Manuka honey has powerful antimicrobial properties to aid against graft infection, and bone char is composed of 90% hydroxyapatite, a well‐studied bioactive material. These additives are natural, abundant, easy to use, and cost effective. CG cryogels incorporated with either BC or MH, and plain CG cryogels were implanted into rat calvarial fracture models for cortical bone regeneration analysis. We found indication of bioactivity with both bone char and manuka honey through the presence of woven bone structure in histology stains and micro computed tomography (microCT) data. Overall, plain CG cryogels supported greater bone regeneration capabilities than the BC or MH incorporated cryogels due to a lack of advanced organized tissue formation and collagen deposition after 8 weeks of implantation; however, future work should explore varying additive concentrations and delivery methods to further assess additive potential.