Nanostructured hybrid materials for bone-tooth unit regeneration

Abstract

As a part of regenerative medicine, biomaterials are largely used in this field of nanotechnology and tissue engineering research. We have re-cently developed a new scaffold using electros-pun nanofibers of Poly (ε-caprolactone), PCL which is able to mimic the collagen extracellular matrix of cells. The aim of this study was to en-gineer a biological and implantable structure leading the regeneration of the tooth-bone unit. For this aim, we have cultured mouse osteo-blasts embedded in a collagen gel on the nano-fibrous membrane and coupled this structure with an embryonic dental germ before implanta-tion. To follow bone and tooth regeneration, we have performed RT-PCR, histology and im-munofluorescence analysis. We showed here that this leaving implantable structure repre-sents an accurate strategy for bone-tooth unit regeneration. We report here the first demon-stration of bone-tooth unit regeneration by us-ing a strategy based on a synthetic nanostruc-tured membrane. This electrospun membrane is manufactured by using an FDA approved poly-mer, PCL and functionalized with osteoblasts before incorporation of the tooth germs at ED14 (the first lower molars) to generate bone-tooth unit in vivo after implantation in mice. Our tech-nology represents an excellent platform on which other sophisticated products could be based.