Bone Regeneration Exploiting Corticoperiosteal Tissue Transfer for Scaffold-Guided Bone Regeneration

• Published in: Tissue engineering. Part C, Methods Methods, 2022-05, Vol.28 (5), p.22-213
• Main Authors: Sparks, David S, Medeiros Savi, Flavia, Saifzadeh, Siamak, Wille, Marie-Luise, Wagels, Michael, Hutmacher, Dietmar W
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Bone and Bones; Bone Regeneration; Models For Bone Regeneration; Sheep; Special Issue; Tissue Engineering - methods; Tissue Scaffolds; X-Ray Microtomography
• ISSN: 1937-3384; 1937-3392
• DOI: 10.1089/ten.tec.2022.0015

Contemporary reconstructive approaches for critical size bone defects carry significant disadvantages. As a result, clinically driven research has focused on the development and translation of alternative therapeutic concepts. Scaffold-guided tissue regeneration (SGTR) is an emerging technique to heal critical size bone defects. However, issues synchronizing scaffold vascularization with bone-specific regenerative processes currently limit bone regeneration for extra large (XL, 19 cm 3 ) critical bone defects. To address this issue, we developed a large animal model that incorporates a corticoperiosteal flap (CPF) for sustained scaffold neovascularization and bone regeneration. In 10 sheep, we demonstrated the efficacy of this approach for healing medium (M, 9 cm 3 ) size critical bone defects as demonstrated on plain radiography, microcomputed tomography, and histology. Furthermore, in two sheep, we demonstrate how this approach can be safely extended to heal XL critical size defects. This article presents an original CPF technique in a well-described preclinical model, which can be used in conjunction with the SGTR concept, to address challenging critical size bone defects in vivo .