Platelet-rich plasma promotes adipose mesenchymal stem cell osteogenesis

In recent years, bone tissue engineering techniques involving life sciences and engineering have become an important research direction in the field of bone repair and reconstruction. Researchers usually use isolated autologous mesenchymal stem cells expanded in vitro and cultured for osteogenic induction and then compounded with scaffold material to construct tissue-engineered bone for implantation in vivo. However, the key to this approach is how to obtain sufficient amount of osteogenic seed cells through cell culture, and the maintenance of the phenotypic characteristics of the seed cells during the long-term expansion and induction culture in vitro are challenges that remain to be solved. In recent years, multipotential cells extracted from aspirated adipose tissue have been used with great success as seed cells in tissue engineering applications. Currently, adipose tissue is the largest reservoir in the human body and the easiest tissue to obtain and harvest for application, with great promise for clinical applications. However, the targeted induction of osteogenic differentiation by genetic modification pathway has many problems such as application safety of viral vectors and spatial and temporal regulation of gene expression, while the induction of osteogenic differentiation by osteogenic chemical reagents has a long induction and culture time, risk of cell contamination and cell phenotype transformation, which limit its possible clinical application. The results of the study showed that ALP activity peaked at 14 days after induction in the PRP group, whereas it peaked at 18 days after induction in the control group, and the former peak was significantly higher than the latter peak. There was also a significant difference in ALP activity between the two groups at each corresponding time point, i.e., the former was significantly higher than the latter. It is generally believed that ALP is an early marker of osteoblast differentiation, and ALP plays a key role in in vitro calcification, starting to be expressed in osteogenic precursor cells. Therefore, the level of ALP activity can reflect the trend of cell transformation to osteoblasts more objectively. We analyzed that the increase of ALP activity in ADSCS promoted by PRP might be due to the fact that dexamethasone in the osteogenic induction medium increased the alkaline phosphatase content of the cells, while TGFβ-like cytokines released by PRP could stimulate the proliferation and differentiation of mesenchymal cells and promote the proliferation of osteoblasts. The cell proliferation is accompanied by an increase in the membrane binding protein ALP. In the subsequent assay of cell mineralization nodules, we found that the cell/carrier complexes cultured in vitro for 14 d showed multilayered black staining on the pore lining of both groups of carriers by Von Kossa staining, suggesting a large amount of calcium salt deposition, while the PRP group had higher calcium salt deposition than the control group. The main mechanism is that ALP can hydrolyze the organic phosphatase, increase the local PO+4 concentration, and destroy the calcification inhibitor, thus initiating calcification. At 14 d of induction culture, ALP activity was significantly higher in the PRP group than in the control group, which was reflected by the significantly higher content of calcium salt deposition in the PRP group than in the control group. In conclusion, the results of this experimental study indicate that PRP can effectively promote the rapid osteoblast phenotypic transformation of cells in vitro, significantly increase cellular ALP activity and increase the ability of cells to mineralize the extracellular matrix. Based on this, this improved in vitro cell culture method has greater clinical significance as it can reduce the time of in vitro cell culture, reduce the possibility of contamination from in vitro manipulation, and also reduce the risk of phenotypic transformation after prolonged cell culture. Further in vivo transplantation tests will require optimization of the vector design and adjustment of the cell/vector complex ratio to obtain better in vivo osteogenesis.