Building Back Better

You slip, trip or fall and crack...your bone breaks. The bigger the break, the longer it takes to heal, as bone and blood vessels rebuild. Sometimes a bone graft is needed for complete recovery. However, current engineered bone grafts promote bone formation alone. Researchers now present a scaffold that promotes bone and blood vessel formation – microgels containing proteins that mimic the matrix in which bone cells sit. When human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were added to microgels containing chitosan, gelatin and hydroxyapatite, they attached and matured into bone cells. Next, MSCs were added to microgels containing only gelatin. Fluorescence microscopy revealed MSCs attached (pictured, left), stretched out (right) and matured into networks of endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. Combining the two microgels encouraged and enhanced bone and blood vessel formation. This lays the foundation for creating scaffolds that promote both new bone and blood vessels to heal fractures.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Matthew D. Patrick and Jeremy F. Keys, and colleagues
• Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Scientific Reports, September 2022