Abstract
Bone tissue engineering (BTE) emerged as a practical approach to tackle prosthetic industry limitations. We merge aspects from developmental biology, engineering and medicine with the aim to produce fully functional bone tissue. Mesenchymal stem cells have the capability of self-renewal and specific lineage differentiation. Herein lies their potential for BTE. Among MSCs, human dental pulp stem cells have a higher proliferation rate, shorter doubling times, lower cellular senescence, and enhanced osteogenesis than hBM-SCs under specific conditions. In addition, these cells are readily accessible and can be extracted through a subtle extraction procedure. Thus, they garner fewer moral concerns than most MSCs available and embody a promising cell source for BTE therapies able to replace hBM-MSCs. Interestingly, their study has been limited. Conversely, there is a need for their further study to harness their true value in BTE, with special emphasis in the design of bioprocesses able to produce viable, homogenous bone constructs in a clinical scale. Here, we study the osteogenic differentiation of hDPSCs encapsulated in alginate hydrogels under suspended culture in a novel perfusion bioreactor. The system is compared with traditional 3D static and fed-batch culture methodologies. The novel system performed better, producing higher alkaline phosphatase activity, and more homogeneous, dense and functional bone constructs. Additionally, cell constructs produced by the in-house-designed system were richer in mature osteoblast-like and mineralizing osteocyte-like cells. In conclusion, this study reports the development of a novel bioprocess able to produce hDPSC-based bone-like constructs, providing new insights into hDPSCs' therapeutic potential and a system able to be transferred from the laboratory bench into medical facilities.