@article {20062, title = {Effect of the cell density on Human Bone Marrow derived Osteoblasts in Gellan Gum-Hydroxyapatite spongy-like hydrogels under osteogenic differentiation}, journal = {Second Achilles Conference/TERM STEM 2019}, year = {2019}, month = {2019-11-07 00:00:00}, address = {Hotel Vila Gal{\'e} Collection, Braga, Portugal}, abstract = {

Osteoporosis is a common cause of fractures in elderly people. \ For so, researchers have been focused on the development of 3D model systems that mimic, as accurate as possible, the bone microarchitecture and functionality, for the validation of new therapies. Despite the importance of osteoclasts in an osteoporosis scenario, most of the developed model systems comprises only the use of osteoblasts. In this sense, the main aim of this project is the development of a more relevant 3D in vitro system composed of human bone marrow derived osteoblasts and osteoclasts within Gellan Gum (GG) spongy-like hydrogels combined with hydroxyapatite (HAp). As a starting point, our focus have been made in the assessment of the best conditions for the culture of osteoblasts.\  With this reasoning, the work presented here highlights the need of optimizing initial cell densities for recreating an in vitro approximation of the bone environment. For that, different densities of human osteoblasts were combined with Gellan Gum (GG)/Hydroxyapatite (HAp) spongy-like hydrogels. In fact, it was already shown that GG-HAp spongy-like hydrogels had promising features to be used in bone tissue engineering [1,2]. As preliminary results, we observed that, the higher cellular density tested positively favored cells viability and interactivity/communication through the cell-cell signaling, specially, under osteogenic conditions. Moreover, the lowest cellular densities tested potentiated steady-state levels of metabolic activity and a nearly non-proliferative state. Overall, the results present herein emphasized the importance of using the most appropriate cell density when establishing a 3D culture system.

}, keywords = {3D Bone microenvironment, Gellan Gum, Hydroxyapatite., osteoblasts}, author = {Bastos, A. R. and Maia, F. R. and Oliveira, J. M. and Reis, R. L. and Correlo, V. M.} }