Topic:Biomaterials
Biomaterials in equine applications refer to natural or synthetic materials used to interact with biological systems for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes. These materials can be utilized in various veterinary procedures, including tissue engineering, wound healing, and drug delivery. In horses, biomaterials are often employed to support bone regeneration, repair tendon injuries, and improve the integration of implants. Examples include biocompatible scaffolds, hydrogels, and bioactive coatings that promote cellular growth and tissue repair. This page gathers peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the development, properties, and applications of biomaterials in equine medicine.
Blood and hoof biodistibution of some trace element (Lithium, Copper, Zinc, Strontium and, Lead) in horse from two different areas of Sicily. Biological monitoring of trace element horses is a well-known tool for investigating potential bioaccumulation in urbanized and industrialized geographical areas. Some biomaterials such as hoof are considered as an important indicator of environmental pollution. Hooves can store trace elements for a long time compared to blood and this represents a scientific key to long-term monitoring of exposure to environmental pollutants. In the present study, samples of equine hoof and blood were taken from an experimental group of horses living in an industrialized area of Sicily (Italy) and from a cont...
Travelling through the Natural Hierarchies of Type I Collagen with X-rays: From Tendons of Cattle, Horses, Sheep and Pigs. Type I collagen physiological scaffold for tissue regeneration is considered one of the widely used biomaterials for tissue engineering and medical applications. It is hierarchically organized: five laterally staggered molecules are packed within fibrils, arranged into fascicles and bundles. The structural organization is correlated to the direction and intensity of the forces which can be loaded onto the tissue. For a tissue-specific regeneration, the required macro- and microstructure of a suitable biomaterial has been largely investigated. Conversely, the function of multiscale structural i...
New trends for osteoarthritis: Biomaterials, models and modeling. The burden of osteoarthritis (OA), one of the major causes of functional disabilities in humans and animals, continues to increase worldwide while no disease-modifying OA drugs (DMOADs) that either slow down or reverse disease progression have been made available. Here, we provide a brief overview of recent advances in: designing new OA drug delivery approaches, focusing on lubrication-based biomaterials and drug delivery systems, such as hydrogels, liposomes, dendrimers, micro- and nanoparticles; using either large (horse) or small (zebrafish) relevant animal models to evaluate new therapeuti...
Osteoarthritis animal models for biomaterial-assisted osteochondral regeneration. Clinical therapeutics for the regeneration of osteochondral defects (OCD) in the early stages of osteoarthritis remain an enormous challenge in orthopaedics. For in-depth studies of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine in terms of OCD treatment, the utility of an optimal OCD animal model is crucial for assessing the effects of implanted biomaterials on the repair of damaged osteochondral tissues. Currently, the most frequently used in vivo animal models for OCD regeneration include mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, horses and nonhuman primates. However, there is no single ...
Peptide Mediated Adhesion to Beta-Lactam Ring of Equine Mesenchymal Stem Cells: A Pilot Study. Regenerative medicine applied to skin lesions is a field in constant improvement. The use of biomaterials with integrin agonists could promote cell adhesion increasing tissue repair processes. The aim of this pilot study was to analyze the effect of an α4β1 integrin agonist on cell adhesion of equine adipose tissue (AT) and Wharton's jelly (WJ) derived MSCs and to investigate their adhesion ability to GM18 incorporated poly L-lactic acid (PLLA) scaffolds. Adhesion assays were performed after culturing AT- and WJ-MSCs with GM18 coating or soluble GM18. Cell adhesion on GM18 containing PLLA sc...
A Critical Overview of the Use of Platelet-Rich Plasma in Equine Medicine Over the Last Decade. In the 1990s, the role of platelets in inflammation and tissue healing was finally recognized. Since then, the clinical use of platelet-derived products (hemocomponents), such as, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), markedly increased. The promise of a more economical option of a disease-modifying treatment led to the intensive and continuous research of PRP products and to its widespread clinical use. A number of protocols and commercial kits have been developed with the intention of creating a more practical and reliable option for clinical use in equine patients. Still, the direct comparison betwee...
An Overview of the Use of Equine Collagen as Emerging Material for Biomedical Applications. Type I collagen has always aroused great interest in the field of life-science and bioengineering, thanks to its favorable structural properties and bioactivity. For this reason, in the last five decades it has been widely studied and employed as biomaterial for the manufacture of implantable medical devices. Commonly used sources of collagen are represented by bovine and swine but their applications are limited because of the zoonosis transmission risks, the immune response and the religious constrains. Thus, type-I collagen isolated from horse tendon has recently gained increasing interest a...
Sub- and Supramolecular X-Ray Characterization of Engineered Tissues from Equine Tendon, Bovine Dermis, and Fish Skin Type-I Collagen. Collagen represents one of the most widely used biomaterial for scaffolds fabrication in tissue engineering as it represents the mechanical support of natural tissues. It also provides physical scaffolding for cells and it influences their attachment, growth, and tissue regeneration. Among all fibrillary collagens, type I is considered one of the gold standard for scaffolds fabrication, thanks to its high biocompatibility, biodegradability, and hemostatic properties. It can be extracted by chemical and enzymatic protocols from several collagen-rich tissues, such as tendon and skin, of differen...
Investigations of Processing-Induced Structural Changes in Horse Type-I Collagen at Sub and Supramolecular Levels. The aim of this work is to evaluate the effects of different extraction and material processing protocols on the collagen structure and hierarchical organization of equine tendons. Wide and Small Angle X-ray Scattering investigations on raw powders and thin films revealed that not only the extraction and purification treatments, but also the processing conditions may affect the extent of the protein crystalline domain and induce a nanoscale "shield effect." This is due to the supramolecular fiber organization, which protects the atomic scale structure from the modifications that occur during f...
Polymer-mineral scaffold augments in vivo equine multipotent stromal cell osteogenesis. Use of bioscaffolds to direct osteogenic differentiation of adult multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) without exogenous proteins is a contemporary approach to bone regeneration. Identification of in vivo osteogenic contributions of exogenous MSCs on bioscaffolds after long-term implantation is vital to understanding cell persistence and effect duration. This study was designed to quantify in vivo equine MSC osteogenesis on synthetic polymer scaffolds with distinct mineral combinations 9 weeks after implantation in a murine model. Cryopreserved, passage (P)1, equine bone marrow-derived MSCs (BMSC)...
The in vitro biocompatibility of d-(+) raffinose modified chitosan: Two-dimensional and three-dimensional systems for culturing of horse articular chondrocytes. The present study investigated the biocompatibility of chitosan films and scaffolds modified with d-(+)raffinose and their capability to support the growth and maintenance of the differentiation of articular chondrocytes in vitro. Primary equine articular chondrocytes were cultured on films and scaffolds of modified d-(+) raffinose chitosan. Their behavior was compared to that of chondrocytes grown in conventional bi- and three-dimensional culture systems, such as micromasses and alginate beads. Chitosan films maintained the phenotype of differentiated chondrocytes (typical round morphology) a...
Bone structural similarity score: a multiparametric tool to match properties of biomimetic bone substitutes with their target tissues. One of the hardest tasks in developing or selecting grafts for bone substitution surgery or tissue engineering is to match the structural and mechanical properties of tissue at the recipient site, because of the large variability of tissue properties with anatomical site, sex, age and health conditions of the patient undergoing implantation. We investigated the feasibility of defining a quantitative bone structural similarity score based on differences in the structural properties of synthetic grafts and bone tissue. Methods: Two biocompatible hydroxyapatite porous scaffolds with different nom...
Equine model for soft-tissue regeneration. Soft-tissue regeneration methods currently yield suboptimal clinical outcomes due to loss of tissue volume and a lack of functional tissue regeneration. Grafted tissues and natural biomaterials often degrade or resorb too quickly, while most synthetic materials do not degrade. In previous research we demonstrated that soft-tissue regeneration can be supported using silk porous biomaterials for at least 18 months in vivo in a rodent model. In the present study, we scaled the system to a survival study using a large animal model and demonstrated the feasibility of these biomaterials for soft-tis...
Changes in platelet morphology and function during 24 hours of storage. For in vitro studies assessing the interaction of platelets with implant materials, common and standardized protocols for the preparation of platelet rich plasma (PRP) are lacking, which may lead to non-matching results due to the diversity of applied protocols. Particularly, the aging of platelets during prolonged preparation and storage times is discussed to lead to an underestimation of the material thrombogenicity. Here, we study the influence of whole blood- and PRP-storage times on changes in platelet morphology and function. Blood from apparently healthy subjects was collected according...
Ultrashort cationic naphthalene-derived self-assembled peptides as antimicrobial nanomaterials. Self-assembling dipeptides conjugated to naphthalene show considerable promise as nanomaterial structures, biomaterials, and drug delivery devices. Biomaterial infections are responsible for high rates of patient mortality and morbidity. The presence of biofilm bacteria, which thrive on implant surfaces, are a huge burden on healthcare budgets, as they are highly resistant to current therapeutic strategies. Ultrashort cationic self-assembled peptides represent a highly innovative and cost-effective strategy to form antibacterial nanomaterials. Lysine conjugated variants display the greatest po...
Treatment of a bone defect consequent to the removal of a periapical cyst with equine bone and equine membranes: clinical and histological outcome. While deproteinized bovine bone and bovine membranes have been well studied and can yield good results when used to treat bone defects and peri-implant dehiscences, enzymatically deantigenated equine bone and equine membranes have emerged as possible alternative biomaterials. The objective of this study was the clinical and histological assessment of such materials: equine bone granules, an equine collagen membrane and an equine pericardium membrane. Methods: Enzymatically deantigenated equine bone and an equine collagen membrane were used to restore a bone defect caused by the removal of a bo...
Thiolated carboxymethyl-hyaluronic-Acid-based biomaterials enhance wound healing in rats, dogs, and horses. The progression of wound healing is a complicated but well-known process involving many factors, yet there are few products on the market that enhance and accelerate wound healing. This is particularly problematic in veterinary medicine where multiple species must be treated and large animals heal slower, oftentimes with complicating factors such as the development of exuberant granulation tissue. In this study a crosslinked-hyaluronic-acid (HA-) based biomaterial was used to treat wounds on multiple species: rats, dogs, and horses. The base molecule, thiolated carboxymethyl HA, was first foun...
Novel nanostructured scaffold for osteochondral regeneration: pilot study in horses. The present in vivo preliminary experiment is aimed at testing mechanical and biological behaviour of a new nano-structured composite multilayer biomimetic scaffold for the treatment of chondral and osteochondral defects. The three-dimensional biomimetic scaffold (Fin-Ceramica Faenza S.p.A., Faenza-Italy) was obtained by nucleating collagen fibrils with hydroxyapatite nanoparticles, in two configurations, bi- and tri-layered, to reproduce, respectively, chondral and osteochondral anatomy. Chondral defects (lateral condyle) and deep osteochondral defects (medial condyle) were made in the distal...
The use of porcine small intestinal submucosa for the repair of full-thickness corneal defects in dogs, cats and horses. To evaluate the efficacy of using a porcine small intestinal submucosa (SIS) graft covered by a conjunctival flap for the surgical repair of full-thickness corneal wounds in dogs, cats and horses. Methods: All records dating from August 1999 to February 2003 from Purdue University Veterinary Teaching Hospital of patients that had undergone ophthalmic surgical procedures and received a SIS corneal graft for a full-thickness lesion were reviewed. Fifteen cases were identified including six dogs, two cats and seven horses. Requirements for inclusion in this study were that SIS was used as a corne...