Promotion of osteogenic differentiation by non-thermal biocompatible plasma treated chitosan scaffold

Non-thermal biocompatible plasma (NBP) has recently emerged as an attractive tool for surface modification of biomaterials in tissue engineering. Three dimensional chitosan scaffolds have been widely used in bone tissue engineering due to biodegradable and biocompatible properties. The present study aimed to evaluate osteogenic potential of NBP treated chitosan scaffold. The surface characteristics of scaffolds were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), cell proliferation and differentiation was tested with osteoprogenitor cell line MC3T3-E1. The results show that NBP modified scaffold increase cell metabolic by MTT assay and live/dead assay. More importantly, we evidenced enhancement of osteogenic differentiation on NBP treated scaffolds by an increase of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, high degree of extracellular mineralization and up-regulated osteogenic marker genes expression level. The findings in our study highlighted NBP as the innovative method to modified chitosan scaffold and to fine-tuning the scaffold a more suitable and beneficial biomaterial for in vivo bone tissue engineering and clinical bone defects therapies.