Bacterial cellulose as a potential meniscus implant

Abstract

Traumatic or degenerative meniscal lesions are a frequent problem. The meniscus cannot regenerate after resection. These lesions often progress and lead to osteoarthritis. Collagen meniscal implants have been used in clinical practice to regenerate meniscal tissue after partial meniscectomy. The mechanical properties of bacterial cellulose (BC) gel were compared with a collagen material and the pig meniscus. BC was grown statically in corn steep liquid medium, as described elsewhere. Pig meniscus was harvested from pigs. The collagen implant was packed in sterile conditions until use. The different materials were evaluated under tensile and compression load, using an Instron 5542 with a 500 N load cell. The feasibility for implantation was explored using a pig model. The Young's modulus of bacterial cellulose was measured to be 1 MPa, 100 times less for the collagen material, 0.01 MPa in tensile load. The Young's modulus of bacterial cellulose and meniscus are similar in magnitude under a compression load of 2 kPa and with five times better mechanical properties than the collagen material. At higher compression strain, however, the pig meniscus is clearly stronger. These differences are clearly due to a more ordered and arranged structure of the collagen fibrils in the meniscus. The combination of the facts that BC is inexpensive, can be produced in a meniscus shape, and promotes cell migration makes it an attractive material for consideration as a meniscus implant.

Acetylated bacterial cellulose coated with urinary bladder matrix as a substrate for retinal pigment epithelium

“…This may be due to microbial contamination of the porcine urinary bladders that led to the presence of endotoxins in the UBM solution. Similar endotoxin results have been reported for BC scaffolds produced by G. xylinus ATCC ® 700198™ for tissueengineered urinary conduits [39].…”

“…C), both samples showed similar stress-strain behavior, with stress increasing with strain increment until the sample collapse. The presence of UBM resulted in a 3-fold increase in the elastic modulus ( ), which suggests that it strongly adheres to sample fibers [19,39]. A porous surface could be observed in Fig.…”

“…The endotoxin limit is 500 EU L -1 for general medical devices and 60 EU L -1 for devices that contact cerebrospinal fluid [41]. The endotoxin quantification obtained by the LAL test where the short and common purification/depyrogenation method of treating BC with an aqueous 1N NaOH solution, followed by rinsing with deionized sterile water, was found to be effective in thin BC scaffolds [39]. UBM coating resulted in a 20-fold increase in the amount of endotoxins present in the ABC substrates.…”

Mechanical evaluation of bacterial nanocellulose as an implant material for ear cartilage replacement

“…Due to its good tensile mechanical properties, BNC has been used in previous work for blood vessel (Bodin et al, 2007a;Klemm et al, 2001;Malm et al, 2012), meniscus (Bodin et al, 2007b;Martinez et al, 2012), and articular cartilage tissue engineering (TE) strategies (Andersson et al, 2010;Svensson et al, 2005). It has been shown that BNC supports adhesion and proliferation of different cell types (Andersson et al, 2010;Backdahl et al, 2006;Bodin et al, 2010;Brackmann et al, 2011;Svensson et al, 2005), in particular chondrocytes (Andersson et al, 2010;Svensson et al, 2005).…”

Meniscus repair and regeneration: review on current methods and research potential

“…Natural materials used to date are: periosteal tissue (Walsh et al, 1999); perichondral tissue (Bruns et al, 1998); small intestine submucosa (SIS) (Cook et al, 1999); acellular porcine meniscal tissue (Stapleton et al, 2008); and bacterial cellulose (Bodin et al, 2007). While these tissues have high biocompatibility, some of them cannot be employed for tissue engineering techniques as they do not allow varying structure geometry and initial mechanical properties .…”