Stem cell spheroids incorporating fibers coated with adenosine and polydopamine as a modular building blocks for bone tissue engineering.

Although stem cell spheroids offer great potential as functional building blocks for bottom-up bone tissue engineering, delivery of bioactive signals remain challenging. Here, we engineered adenosine-ligand-modified fiber fragments to create a 3D cell-instructive microenvironment for bone. Briefly, the Poly(ι-lactic acid) (PLLA) nanofiber sheet was partially degraded into fragmented fibers (FFs) through aminolysis and adenosine was stably incorporated via one-step polydopamine coating. The SEM and XPS analysis demonstrated that polydopamine assisted adenosine coating efficiency was significantly increased, which led to high coating efficiency of adenosine and its significant retention. The engineered fibers were then assembled into stable spheroids with human-adipose-derived stem cells (hADSCs). The adenosine in the spheroids effectively stimulated A2bR (1.768 ± 0.08) signaling, which further significantly induced the expression of osteogenic markers such as Runx2 (3.216 ± 0.25), OPN (4.136 ± 0.14), OCN (10.16 ± 0.34), and OSX (2.27 ± 0.11) with improved mineral deposition (1.375 ± 0.05 μg per spheroid). In contrast, the adipogenic differentiation of hADSCs was significantly suppressed within the engineered spheroids. Transplantation of engineered spheroids strongly induced osteogenic differentiation of hADSCs in ectopic subcutaneous tissue. Finally, the bone regeneration was significantly enhanced by implanting AP-FF group (59.97 ± 18.33%) as compared to P-FF (27.96 ± 11.14) and defect only (7.97 ± 3.76%). We propose that stem cell spheroids impregnated with engineered fibers enabling adenosine delivery could be promising building blocks for a bottom-up approach to create large tissues for regeneration of damaged bone.