Chitosan-Polyphosphate Scaffold Loaded with Copper for Endodontic Regeneration: A Laboratory Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Regenerative endodontics procedures show promise in treating immature teeth with necrotic pulp and apical periodontitis. This procedure involves the replacement of damaged and infected pulp tissue with viable tissue that restores the normal tooth structure and function. Antimicrobials are currently used to control the infection; however, they are cytotoxic to stem cells of the apical papilla (SCAP) and can lead to root canal calcification. Management of these teeth requires a scaffold that can control root canal infection, wick the blood into the canal, and support the viability and differentiation of SCAP while inhibiting intracanal calcification. This study aims to develop a composite scaffold made of polyphosphate, a calcium binding inorganic polymer shown to promote cell proliferation and tissue regeneration, chitosan, a natural antimicrobial polymer that supports stem cell viability and activity, and copper, a metal ion with bactericidal properties. Methodology: The scaffold was prepared by adding copper (Cu) to chitosan solution, followed by polyphosphate. The resulting scaffold was then freeze-dried and analyzed for elemental composition, chemical structure, release of Cu, antibacterial properties, cytotoxicity, as well as differentiation and mineralization assays. Data were analysed by a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by the Tukey post hoc test. Result: This study demonstrates that, by combining polyphosphate and chitosan, we could fabricate a scaffold that inhibits bacterial growth by 40 % and supports the viability of fibroblast and SCAP. Adding copper to this scaffold further increased bacterial growth inhibition by up to 68% while preserving cell viability. The immunocytochemistry and Alizarin Red staining revealed that this scaffold also supports the odontogenic differentiation of these stem cells while inhibiting their mineralization potential. Furthermore, this scaffold can be fabricated as a 3D cone-shaped scaffold with a strong vertical wicking ability at a rate of 0.5 mm/s and excellent degradability, with 53 % of the scaffold degraded after 28 days. Conclusions: This study shows that a copper-loaded chitosan-polyphosphate scaffold combines biocompatibility, antibacterial activity, wicking ability, and biodegradability and has great potential as an endodontic regenerative scaffold.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".