Tissue engineered biodisc using human intervertebral disc cells and PLGA/DBP scaffold

We fabricated poly(lactide-co-glycolide)(PLGA) scaffolds impregnated demineralized bone particle(DBP)(PLGA/DBP) to investigate the effect of cell viability, proliferation and characteristic maintenance of intervertebral disc(IVD) cells. DBP-loaded PLGA scaffolds were prepared by solvent casting/salt leaching, Human IVD cells were seeded in PLGA/DBP scaffold, and then cell viability and proliferation according to DBP content were analyzed by 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide(MTT) assay. In MTT assay results, cell viability in scaffolds impregnated 20 and 80 wt% of DBP were higher than other scaffolds. Reverse transcript polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) was assessed to measure mRNA expression of the disc target genes(aggrecan and type II collagen) of human IVD cells about various content of DBP. After implantation, thin sections were cut from paraffin embedded tissues and histological sections were stained H&E staining for observation of disc cell distribution. We concluded that the using of DBP(especially 20 wt% of DBP) in terms of scaffold fabrication for bio-disc with human IVD cells helps growth of disc cells maintained their phenotypes.