Fabrication of Uniform Casein/CaCO₃ Vaterite Microspheres and Investigation of Its Formation Mechanism

Abstract

Uniform Casein/CaCO3 microspheres were fabricated with well tuned properties and the formation mechanism based on the templating effect of casein micelles was proposed. In bone tissue engineering, vaterite microspheres were promising because of the biocompatibility and easy fabrication. Here Casein/CaCO3 microspheres were precipitated by mixing CaCl2 and Na2CO3 solutions under stirring in the presence of casein. All samples were mainly in vaterite, composed of aggregates of nanosized crystals. With the increase of casein concentration, the amount of calcite and microsphere size decreased while the loading content of casein increased, suggesting that casein induced the formation of vaterite and also stabilized the crystal phase. The formation mechanism was further investigated. With the increase of CaCl2 amount, the size of the forming microspheres increased while the zeta potential was stabilized, the polycrystalline nature was shown, and the presence of Ca inside microspheres was confirmed. Hence, the formation mechanism based on casein micelles which demonstrated the template effect was proposed. Casein/CaCO3 microspheres enhanced the deposition of hydroxyapatite crystals and sample II-8 was tested as the most cytocompatible on mesenchymal stem cells. The properties of Casein/CaCO3 microspheres could be well controlled; for better performance in bone tissue engineering, formation of composite scaffolds may be preferred.

A Bioresponsive System Based on Mesoporous Organosilica Nanoparticles for Smart Delivery of Fungicide in Response to Pathogen Presence

“…After reacting with APTS and succinic anhydride, MON-COOH showed the CO stretching vibration at 1717 cm –1 and N–H bending vibration at 1560 cm –1 . After mineral deposition, the absorption bands of CO and N–H were restrained due to the shielding effect of CaC; also, the characteristic band of vaterite at 870 cm –1 was observed . Due to the existence of silanol groups on MON, Figure d shows that the zeta potential of MON was −21.8 mV and then increased to +22.8 mV after amino group functionalization.…”

Rationally designed bioactive milk-derived protein scaffolds enhanced new bone formation

“…1 C. PVA powder group was not detected any peaks in narrow scans at nitrogen (N1s, 399.73 eV), phosphorus (P2p, 133.17 eV), sodium (Na1s, 1071.7 eV) or calcium (Ca2p, 347.02 eV) [ 24 ]. The casein powder group showed higher counts of N1s, P2p peaks compared to the other groups [ [25] , [26] , [27] ]. The counts levels of Ca2p peaks were analyzed comparable with Casein powder, MDP and MDP-DOPA groups.…”

Controlled Synthesis and Microstructure of Metastable Flower-Like Vaterite

“…The typical flower-like particles are presented in Figure 3D,F, which were similar to the ones obtained at 270 W. Figure 4 shows the FT-IR spectra of the samples, and the peaks at 713 cm −1 (ν 4 ), 875 cm −1 (ν 2 ), and 1418 cm −1 (ν 3 ) correspond to the in-plane bending vibration, the out-plane bending vibration, and the antisymmetric stretching vibration of calcite, respectively. The 745 cm −1 (ν 4 ), 1080 cm −1 (ν 1 ), and 1490 cm −1 (ν 2 ) and 1440 cm −1 (ν 3 ) splitting peaks correspond to the in-plane bending vibration, symmetric stretching vibration, and anti-symmetric stretching vibration absorption peak of vaterite [16]. The rhombohedral crystals could be identified as calcite [15].…”