A simple polysaccharide based injectable hydrogel compositing nano-hydroxyapatite for bone tissue engineering

Abstract The biomaterials based injectable hydrogel showed great potential as bone tissue engineering scaffold for its biocompatibility, injectable nature and interconnected porous structure that favors loading bioactive substances or cells for bone repair. In this study, N-carboxyethyl chitosan (NCEC) and oxidized dextran (ODex) was synthesized to fabricate a simple polysaccharide injectable hydrogel based on Schiff base crosslinking (dynamic imine bonds), to composite nano-hydroxyapatite (nHAP) for rat cranial bone repair. The polysaccharide hydrogel displayed interconnected porous structure and suitable rheological properties for compositing nHAP. Biochemical properties of the hydrogel were not affected through the composition of nHAP. In vivo cranial bone repair results showed excellent bone repair effect of the composite materials, demonstrating the simply constructed polysaccharide hydrogel is suitable as bone tissue engineering scaffold.