Bone bioengineering: TIMP-2 gene modulating effect on human dental pulp stem cells seeded on collagen/chitosan on in vivo osteogenesis model

Abstract

The urban concentration and greater longevity have provided the increased number of chronic diseases and injuries arising from violence, especially bone loss. The classical therapy is the use of autologous grafts, but alternatives such as allograft, alloplastic or xenogenous are part of the therapeutic arsenal of the clinician. However, it is know that all have advantages and disadvantages, resulting in the absence of an ideal material to repair these lesions. The tissue engineering aims to use the cells of patients, combined with appropriate scaffolds, and stimulate them with growth factors/differentiation and/or extracellular matrix molecules (ECM) to produce new tissue in vitro. Our group has been studying potential biomaterials and growth factors for bone bioengineering, as well as the role of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors (TIMPs and RECK) in the development and bone repair and biomaterial-ECM interaction in vivo. Our group generated genetically modified cells by overexpression and gene inhibition for MMPs -2, -9 and -14, TIMPs -1, -2, -3, -4 and RECK in human mesenchymal stem cells and we are conducting the analysis the effect of these modulation in osteogenesis in vitro as well as its association with biomaterial collagen/chitosan. Thus, this project aims to investigate the effect of TIMP-2 gene modulating (overexpression and gene inhibition) in human dental pulp stem cells seeded on collagen/chitosan and subcutaneously implanted in nude mice to assess the in vivo osteogenesis.