Bone Abstracts

Our skeleton needs to carry the body weight and to resist mechanical impacts. This capability or, conversely, bone fragility are controlled by the amount of bone mass, the shape and internal architecture of the bones, as well as by the material of which they are built. Bone material consists of a complex multi-scale arrangement of mineralized collagen fibrils containing also water, proteoglycans as well as some non-collagenous proteins. This organization is by no means constan...

Biographical DetailsPeter Fratzl is director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, and honorary professor at Humboldt University Berlin and Potsdam University. He holds an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, and a doctorate in Physics from the University of Vienna, Austria. His scientific interests include the relation betwee...

Mineralized tissues like bone, articular calcified cartilage or mineralized turkey leg tendon (MTLT) are build by a composite of hydroxyapatite nano-particles and organic matrix. In bone and MTLT the matrix is formed by collagen type-I, but in contrast to bone in MTLT the collagen is uniaxial orientated, while in cartilage the matrix consists of collagen type-II and proteoglycans.Composition/orientation differences were investigated by a new scanning aco...

The local mechanical properties of bone are influenced not only by the material chemical composition but also by the spatial arrangement of the component’s e.g. orientation of collagen matrix. However, not much is known about local elastic modulus variations in cortical bone. Our goal was to use acoustic imaging to map elastic properties of murine bone with a several microns resolution. Rodent long bones exhibit a permanent growth with endosteal/periosteal bone formation ...

For a reliable assessment of bone’s material quality in a clinical environment, a fast way to measure the mechanical properties of bone is needed. The investigation of material heterogeneity and anisotropy resulting from bone remodeling and mineralization requires an imaging technique with micrometer resolution. Scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) using high-frequency lenses allows measuring the stiffness of bone under wet conditions in a non-destructive way with this spat...

In type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients, an increased fracture risk is observed, although the bone mineral density is even higher than in non-diabetic patients. This raises the question of the quality of the organic and inorganic matrix in bone1–3. T2DM is also known to forward dysfunctions in the development of soft tissues such as brittle skin due to cross-linking of the collagen or inflammation of the gingiva. For the latter, a possible influence of diab...

Spatial distributions of major and minor chemical elements are supposed to change during tissue maturation and due to bone diseases. Previous studies suggested that osteocytes have the ability to interact with the bone matrix of their environment. For this interaction osteocytes make use of the big inner surface of the osteocyte lacuno-canalicular network (OLCN) in which they are accommodated. The aim of this study was to quantify spatial correlations between the elemental com...

In type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients, an increased fracture risk is observed, although the bone mineral density is even higher than in non-diabetic patients, which raises the question of the quality of the organic and inorganic matrix in bone1,2. T2DM is also known to favor inflammation of the gingiva and paradontosis in general. However, little is known about the mineral nano-architecture in the mandible and about the possible influence of diabetes. Using sy...

Background and objective: Targeting bone and cartilage includes approaches using tetracyclines, peptide conjugates, as well as anionic moieties like bisphosphonates. However, the selective targeting of the different compartments still remains a challenge. In previous studies native and demineralized ovine bone was used to analyze the affinity of polyanions derived from dendritic polyglycerol (dPG) toward hydroxyapatite and collagen. Whereas the neutral polymer did not show any...

The transplantation of autologous bone graft represents the ‘gold standard’ treatment for large bone defects, despite the harvesting co-morbidity and limited availability. An alternative scaffold-based approach is presented. Our aim was to investigate to what degree structured scaffolds alone, or in combination with biological stimuli, allow guiding tissue regeneration. Scaffolds consisting of medical-grade polycaprolactone and tricalcium phosphate microparticles, co...