Chitosan nanoscaffold injectable gel: a unique bone glue bionanocomposites

Abstract

Injectable bone glue is a potential material for bone healing due to the possibility of direct injection into bone breaking area, the efficient bone connection through chemical and/ or physical bonds, and the convenient clinical treatment without surgery. Chitosan is a good candidate since it is not only glucosamine via enzymatic degradation, a major component of bone marrow, but also it can be derivatized to highly viscous or gel-type glue. Herein, we propose a novel bone glue bio nanocomposite based on chitosan Nano scaffold (CN). The advantages of using CN are the ease of derivatization to be water soluble species (carboxymethyl chitosan Nano scaffold, CMCN), the effective heterogeneous reaction to obtain epoxidized CN, and the possibility to use as reinforce material in gel network. The CN gel shows biocompatibility as shown from the SaOs-2 cell culture test. The CN also help the gel incorporation with hydroxyapatite as evidenced from optical microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM).