Date of Award

12-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biomedical Engineering and Sciences

First Advisor

Vipuil Kishore, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Venkat Keshav Chivukula, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Csaba Palotai, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Linxia Gu, Ph.D.

Abstract

Every year, over 20 million people globally are affected by bone tissue loss due to disease or trauma. Bone tissue engineering (BTE) is touted as a promising approach to promote bone tissue repair and regeneration. In this realm, development of collagen-based scaffolds incorporated with a bioceramic is often attempted to generate tissue scaffolds that resemble the organic and inorganic composition of native bone. In addition, a variety of different collagen processing techniques have been employed to produce anisotropically aligned scaffolds that can provide the essential biochemical and structural cues to guide cell response. While there have been numerous studies on investigating the effects of collagen alignment and ceramic incorporation on cell response, the current study seeked to decouple the effects of collagen alignment and ceramic incorporation on osteoblast cell response. Specifically, β-tricalcium phosphate (TCP) was incorporated within random collagen or electrochemically aligned collagen (ELAC) threads and the effects of collagen alignment and TCP incorporation on the physical properties of ELAC threads and Saos-2 osteoblast cell viability, metabolic activity, and differentiation was investigated. Threads without TCP incorporated were used as the control. Results showed near 100% TCP incorporation in both ELAC and random collagen threads. SEM imaging showed that TCP incorporation slightly disrupted collagen alignment in ELAC threads. Tensile tests showed that ELAC threads are significantly stronger and stiffer (p < 0.05) than random collagen threads, and TCP incorporation significantly decreased (p < 0.05) the strength and stiffness of ELAC threads. TCP incorporation had no impact on swelling, stability ,and crosslinking degree of both random collagen and ELAC threads. Cell studies showed that Saos-2 cells cultured on ELAC and TCP-ELAC threads orient along the long axis of the thread and parallel to the direction of collagen fiber alignment. Further, TCP incorporation significantly increased (p < 0.05) cell metabolic activity on ELAC threads. Higher ALP activity was observed on ELAC threads as opposed to random collagen although the results were not statistically significant. In conclusion, this work reports important findings that set the foundation for further development of TCP incorporated ELAC threads for use in BTE applications.

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