Evaluation of Reinforced Bioactive Bone Chip Scaffold in Bone Healing

Method: For this study we used male Wistar rats (Harlan, Italy) in which a full-thickness calvaria defect (5x8mm) on each parietal region was induce using the piezosurgery, a surgical technique that allows a selective cut of only mineralized structures without causing bone necrosis by heating.
The bone scaffold was implanted in the right cranial defects for 20, 30, 60 and 120 days, whereas the left defects were used as control of the spontaneous bone regenerative process for the same time points. At the end of the treatments, the animals were sacrificed and the tissue near the implant was removed to evaluate bone healing process by histopathological, histomorphometric and immunohistochemical analyses.

Result: The histopathological results showed that “Reinforced Bioactive Bone Chip” enhanced bone healing process and the histomorphometric data confirmed the presence of new formed bone within calvaria defects. In addition, the immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the neovascularization in newly formed bone: the results obtained confirmed the previous data supporting the strong correlation between the grade of bone regeneration and the angiogenesis.

Conclusion: “Reinforced Bioactive Bone Chip” showed good bone regenerative properties and it could be considered for future clinical use in human, mainly in the field of regeneration and /or replacement of bone tissue compartment of maxillofacial surgery.