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Tissue-engineered Rabbit Cranial Suture from Autologous Fibroblasts and BMP2Tissue Engineering Laboratory, Rm 237, Departments of Orthodontics, Bioengineering, and Anatomy and Cell Biology, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, MC 841, 801 South Paulina Street, Chicago, IL 60612-7211, USA; Correspondence: * corresponding author, jmao2{at}uic.edu Craniosynostosis is a congenital disorder of premature ossification of cranial sutures, occurring in one of approximately every 2500 live human births. This work addressed a hypothesis that a cranial suture can be tissue-engineered from autologous cells. Dermal fibroblasts were isolated subcutaneously from growing rabbits, culture-expanded, and seeded in a gelatin scaffold. We fabricated a composite tissue construct by sandwiching the fibroblast-seeded gelatin scaffold between two collagen sponges loaded with recombinant human BMP2. Surgically created, full-thickness parietal defects were filled with the composite tissue construct in the same rabbits from which dermal fibroblasts had been obtained. After four-week in vivo implantation, there was de novo formation of tissue-engineered cranial suture, microscopically reminiscent of the adjacent natural cranial suture. The tissue-engineered cranial suture showed radiolucency on radiographic images, in contrast to radio-opacity of microscopically ossified calvarial defects filled with fibroblast-free, BMP2-loaded constructs. This approach may be refined for tissue engineering of cranial sutures for craniosynostosis patients.
Key Words: suture bone osteoblast craniofacial tissue engineering
Journal of Dental Research, Vol. 83, No. 10,
751-756 (2004) |
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