Development of folding paper-based bone microenvironment to investigate cellular crosstalk involving protein BMP-2 & Wnt1 between PDPCs & ADSCs in bone healing

Abstract

Bone defects commonly arise from osteoporosis cause serious orthopedic issues that have been affecting millions of people worldwide, especially in older people. This condition is defined by low bone mineral density and increased fragility which could lead to severe health complications and increased mortality risk. Therefore, understanding the bone healing process is needed for developing effective treatments. During the bone healing process, the key players are PDPCs and ADSCs. Their cellular crosstalk is important for bone formation. These cells express osteogenesis markers, including BMP-2 and Wnt1, which are essential for initiating and regulating osteoblasts activities involved in bone formation. Thus, cell culture is performed to observe PDPCs and ADSCs cellular crosstalk through measurement of BMP-2 and Wnt1 expression. In this research, a folding paper-based is developed mimicking the bone microenvironment and used to perform mono- and co-culture. The paper based device were utilized to observe intercellular and extracellular crosstalk as well as the osteogenesis capability under inflammatory conditions of IL-6. The protein expressions were quantified using paper immunoassay and ImageJ software for data analysis. Additionally, a blocking effect was conducted to validate the importance of PDPCs and ADSCs cellular crosstalk during osteogenesis. The findings show that the paper model successfully works to observe cellular crosstalk and osteogenesis capability based on protein expression in both mono- and co-culture. In co-culture conditions, BMP-2 and Wnt1 expression are higher; this finding is supported by the antibody blocking effect result which demonstrates that cellular crosstalk is important for osteogenesis.