Polysaccharides based injectable hydrogel compositing bio-glass for cranial bone repair

Bone disease is a public health problem around the word, and it is urgent to develop novel tissue engineering scaffolds for the complicated cranial bone regeneration. The present work developed a novel triple crosslinked polysaccharides based injectable hydrogel to composite bio-glass (BG) for cranial bone repair. Dynamic mechanical analysis showed the storage modulus (G′) of the hydrogel reached to ∼4000 Pa. While after compositing BG, G′ exceeded 4500 Pa. The degradation behavior of the hydrogel is influenced by hydrogel composition, crosslinking methods and degradation environment. Through compositing BG for rat cranial bone repair, excellent bone regeneration effect was achieved (chunks of "white" new tissue was detected in the defected site, HE histopathological analysis confirmed the new tissue was bone tissue). Thus, the hydrogel is suitable as the carrier of BG for bone repair, demonstrating the prepared triple crosslinked hydrogel is potential for bone tissue engineering applications.