Hyaluronic acid bioinspired polymers for the regulation of cell chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation.

As the simplest glycosaminoglycan (GAG) in extracellular matrix, hyaluronic acid (HA) takes part in several important biological processes, such as regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration. In this work, a series of HA-inspired polymers with different saccharide and carboxylate units (HA-analogue polymers) are synthesized by free radical polymerization, and characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer (NMR), Moreover, cell experiments demonstrate that HA-analogue polymers with a certain proportion of saccharide and carboxylate (PM 1 G 1) units shows a positive effect on the proliferation and differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs). Furthermore, HA-analogue polymers have prominent cartilage inductive capacity in chondrogenic induction medium (CIM) and brilliant bone inductive capacity in osteogenic induction medium (OIM) toward BMSCs. Therefore, it is confirmed that the HA-analogue polymers can effectively mimic the functions of HA and have broad potential application prospects in the biomedical and clinical fields. • We firstly fabricated various HA-analogue polymers with saccharide and carboxylate units through a facile strategy. • HA-analogue polymers such as PM1G1 show positive effect on the proliferation of BMSCs. • HA-analogue polymers can guide the chondrogenic differentiation of BMSCs in basic culture medium (BCM). • The synergistic effect of HA-analogue polymers and induction medium has potential in applications of tissue engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]