Arginine based poly (ester amide)/ hyaluronic acid hybrid hydrogels for bone tissue Engineering

Bone transplantations are still facing many serious challenges, hydrogel as a new kind of artificial bone substitutes has developed into a promising bone scaffold material. However, it is still a challenge to combine bioactive agents and hydrogel matrix to promote osteoinductivity. Herein, we developed a novel bioactive hydrogel based on arginine-based unsaturated poly (ester amide) (Arg-UPEA) and methacrylated hyaluronic acid (HA-MA) via photo-crosslinking. As the results indicated, we found that the introduction of Arg-UPEA into HA-MA hydrogels could finely modulate their compressive modulus, swelling level and porous structure. Besides, among groups of different feed ratio, groups of 10 % and 15 % of Arg-UPEA content effectively enhanced osteogenic differentiation in osteoblasts when compared with HA-MA hydrogel. Furthermore, better bone regeneration and expression of osteogenesis-related factors in vivo also verified the Arg-UPEA/HA-MA hybrid hydrogels as a promising scaffold material for bone tissue engineering.