Tailor-Engineered POSS-Based Hybrid Gels for Bone Regeneration

Organic-inorganic oligo(ethylene glycol)-polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (OEG(n)-POSS) hybrid materials are woven into macroscopically shaped entities by thiol-ene chemistry. The mechanical behavior and interfacial nature of the OEG(n)-POSS materials are easily tailored by changing the length of OEG(n). The nanostructured OEG(n)-POSS materials exhibited excellent bioactivity to form hydroxyapatite, whose morphology was also dependent on the molecular weight of OEG(n). Among them, OEG(2)-POSS materials enhanced the in vitro differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells to osteoblasts and promoted the in vivo bone formation within a femoral condyle defect site, but they could be limited by the mismatch rates between the degradation and new bone formation. Thus, OEG(2)-POSS could be practically applied for bone regeneration by optimizing the degradation rate based on its key structural features, which would be of great benefit to bone tissue engineering in the future.