A novel vehicle-like drug delivery 3D printing scaffold and its applications for a rat femoral bone repairing in vitro and in vivo

The high surface area ratio and special structure of mesoporous bioactive glass (MBG) endow it with excellent physical adsorption of various drugs without destroying the chemical activity. Silicate 1393 bioactive glass (1393) is famous for its fantastic biodegradability and osteogenesis. Herein, we have built a novel vehicle-like drug delivery 3D printing scaffold with multiplexed drug delivery capacity by coating MBG on the surface of 1393 ([email protected]). Furthermore, we have applied DEX and BMP-2 on the [email protected] scaffold to endow it with antibacterial and osteogenic properties. Results indicated that this [email protected] scaffold could effectively load and controlled release BMP-2, DNA and DEX, which can be applied for orthopedic treatment. The in vitro study showed that the DEX loaded [email protected] exhibited excellent antibacterial ability, which was evaluated by Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), and the BMP-2 loaded [email protected] can improve the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and upregulate the expression of osteogenesis-related genes (OCN and RUNX2) of human bone mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs). Moreover, the in vivo study further confirmed that the BMP-2 loaded [email protected] group showed better osteogenic capacity as compared to that of the 1393 group in a rat femoral defect. Together, these results suggested that the vehicle-like drug delivery 3D printing scaffold [email protected] could be a promising candidate for bone repair and relative bone disease treatment.