Multi-modal characterization of polymeric gels to determine the influence of testing method on observed elastic modulus
David M. Kingsley, Caitlin H.McCleery, Christopher D.L.Johnson, Michael T.K.Bramson, Deniz Rende, Ryan J.Gilbert, David T.Corr
Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, available online 10 January 2019, 
Demand for materials that mechanically replicate native tissue has driven development and characterization of various new biomaterials. However, a consequence of materials and characterization technique diversity is a lack of consensus within the...
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Cross-linked Cellulose Nanocrystal Aerogels as Viable Bone Tissue Scaffolds
Daniel A. Osorioa, Bryan E.J. Lee, Jacek M. Kwiecien, Xiaoyue Wang, Iflah Shahid, Ariana L. Hurley, Emily D. Cranston, Kathryn Grandfield
Acta Biomaterialia, 2019, 
Chemically cross-linked cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) aerogels possess many properties beneficial for bone tissue scaffolding applications. CNCs were extracted using sulfuric acid or phosphoric acid, to produce CNCs with sulfate and phosphate...
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Viscoelasticity and histology of the human cartilage in healthy and degenerated conditions of the knee
Michael Seidenstuecker, Julius Watrinet , Anke Bernstein, Norbert P. Suedkamp , Sergio H. Latorre Anastasija Maks and Hermann O. Mayr
Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research, November 2019, 14:256. DOI: 10.1186/s13018-019-1308-5
Background: There are many studies on osteoarthritis, but only a few studies deal with human arthrosis, comparing the mechanical properties of healthy and diseased samples. In most of these studies, only isolated areas of the tibia are...
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High Impact Exercise Improves Bone Microstructure and Strength in Growing Rats
M. Tanvir, I. Londono, F. Moldovan and I. Villemure
Nature Scientific Reports, volume 9, Article number: 13128 (2019) 
Physical activity is beneficial for skeletal development. However, impact sports during adolescence, leading to bone growth retardation and/or bone quality improvement, remains unexplained. This study investigated the effects of in vivo low...
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A study of saliva lubrication using a compliant oral mimic
G. Carpenter, S. Bozorgi, S. Vladescu, A.E. Forte, C. Myant, R.V. Potineni, T. Reddyhoff, and S.K. Baier
Food Hydrocolloids, Elsevier, Available online 23 January 2019, 
Due to ethical issues and the difficulty in obtaining biological tissues, it is important to find synthetic elastomers that can be used as replacement test media for research purposes. An important example of this is friction testing to...
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Experimental and finite element analyses of bone strains in the growing rat tibia induced by in vivo axial compression
Tanvir Mustafy, Irène Londono, Isabelle Villemure
Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials
The objective of this study was to develop and validate a voxel based FE modeling approach to investigate bone strains from in vivo rat tibial compression during the adolescent period. To do so, in vivo strain gauge measurements and voxel based...
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Properties of Biopolymer Films in Ionic Solutions and Their Applications as 3D Printed Personalized Wound Dressings
D.P. Ramos
University of Toronto (Canada), ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2019. 13805509.
This thesis describes the effects of ionic solutions on biopolymer films and the development of a 3D printed personalized wound dressing.

Chitosan, gelatin, and composite chitosan/gelatin films were exposed to NaCl, Na2SO4, and CaCl2...
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Quantifying vocal fold wound?healing biomechanical property changes
G. R. Dion, T. Guda, S. Mukudai, R.Bing, J-F. Lavoie and R.C. Branski
Laryngoscope. 2019 May 6. doi: 10.1002/lary.27999
Objectives

Development of novel vocal fold (VF) therapeutics is limited by a lack of standardized, meaningful outcomes. We hypothesize that automated microindentation?based VF biomechanical property mapping matched to histology...
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Compressive Mechanical Properties of Porcine Brain: Experimentation and Modeling of the Tissue Hydration Effects
R.K. Prabhu, M.T. Begonia, W.R. Whittington, M.A. Murphy, Y. Mao, J. Liao, L.N. Williams, M.F. Horstemeyer and J. Sheng
Bioengineering 2019, 6, 40; doi:10.3390/bioengineering6020040
Abstract: Designing protective systems for the human head—and, hence, the brain—requires understanding the brain’s microstructural response to mechanical insults. We present the behavior of wet and dry porcine brain undergoing...
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Injectable Poly(oligoethylene glycol methacrylate)-Based Hydrogels Fabricated from Highly Branched Precursor Polymers: Controlling Gel Properties by Precursor Polymer Morphology
Ivan Urosev, Helen Dorrington, Nicola Muzzin, Richard Alsop, Emilia Bakaic, Trevor Gilbert, Maikel Rheinstädter and Todd Hoare
ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 2019, 1, 3, 369-380 January 24, 2019 h
The physicochemical properties of injectable hydrogels are typically modified by altering the chemistry of the precursor polymer and/or the amount or type of cross-linker, both of which can lead to hydrogels with altered mechanics, swelling,...
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Intervertebral disc implant
R Kandel, JP Santerre, SQ Li
US Patent App. 10195044, 2019
The present inventors have generated the tissues that comprise the intervertebral disc and have established viable protocols and tissue conditions that facilitate integration of all the tissue components into one functional tissue so it can...
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Comparative study on complexes formed by chitosan and different polyanions: Potential of chitosan-pectin biomaterials as scaffolds in tissue engineering
Fernanda Carla Bombaldi de Souza, Renata Francielle Bombaldi de Souza, Bernard Drouin, Diego Mantovani and Angela Maria Moraes
International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, Volume 132, 1 July 2019, Pages 178-189
Polyelectrolyte complexes of chitosan (Ch) and pectin (Pc) or alginate (Alg) were produced in the presence or absence of the silicone gel Silpuran® 2130 A/B (Sil) and the surfactant Kolliphor® P188 (Kol). Ch-Pc-Kol-based formulations presented...
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On-Demand Radial Electrodeposition of Alginate Tubular Structures
D. M. Kingsley, J. A. Capuano and D. T. Corr
ACS Biomater. Sci. Eng. Publication Date:June 12, 2019, 
We present an electrodeposition technique for fabricating tubular alginate structures. In this technique, two electrodes (anode and cathode) are suspended in a solution of alginate and insoluble calcium carbonate particles, and the application of...
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Osteochondral Repair and Electromechanical Evaluation of Custom 3D Scaffold Microstructured by Direct Laser Writing Lithography
J. Maciulaitis, M. Miskiniene, S. Rekstyte, M.Bratchikov, A. Darinskas, A.Simbelyte, G. Daunoras, A. Laurinaviciene, A. Laurinavicius, R. Gudas, M. Malinauskas and R. Maciulaitis
Cartilage · May 2019,
Objective

The objective of this study was to assess a novel 3D microstructured scaffold seeded with allogeneic chondrocytes (cells) in a rabbit osteochondral defect model.

Design

Direct laser writing lithography in...
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Magnesium phosphate hydrogels
F Tamimi Marino, A Ali Al-Hashedi, M Laurenti, A Ebraheem Al Subaie, M-N Abdallah, I Tamimi Marino

The present invention relates to magnesium phosphate hydrogels. More specifically, the present invention is concerned with such gels and their uses as scaffolds for bone tissue engineering, as drug delivery systems and in pastes for cleaning dental...
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Injectable Poly(Oligoethylene Glycol Methacrylate)-Based Hydrogels Fabricated from Highly Branched Precursor Polymers: Controlling Gel Properties by Precursor Polymer Morphology
I. Urosev, H. Dorrington, N. Muzzin, R.J. Alsop, E. Bakaic, T. Gilbert, M.C. Rheinstadter, and T. Hoare
ACS Applied Polymer Materials Just Accepted Manuscript, DOI: 10.1021/acsapm.8b00085
The physicochemical properties of injectable hydrogels are typically modified by altering the chemistry of the precursor polymer and/or the...
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Bone-Specific Overexpression of PITX1 Induces Senile Osteoporosis in Mice Through Deficient Self-Renewal of Mesenchymal Progenitors and Wnt Pathway Inhibition
N. Karam, J-F. Lavoie, B. St-Jacques, S. Bouhanik, A. Franco, N. Ladoul and A. Moreau
Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 3544 (2019)
The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying senile osteoporosisremain poorly understood. In this study, transgenic mCol1?1-Pitx1 miceoverexpressing paired-like homeodomain 1 (PITX1), a homeobox transcriptionfactor, rapidly develop a severe...

GO-Modified flexible polymer nanocomposites fabricated via 3D stereolithography
C.H.A. Tsang, A. Zhakeyev, D. Y.C. Leung and J. Xuan
Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. (2019). 
Graphene oxide (GO) induced enhancement of elastomer properties showed a great deal of potential in recent years, but it is still limited by the barrier of the complicated synthesis processes. Stereolithography(SLA),used in fabrication of...
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High-throughput synthesis, analysis, and optimization of injectable hydrogels for protein delivery
Fei Xu, Brandon Corbett, Sydney Bell, Chiyan Zhang, Monika Budi Hartono, Zohreh Jomeh Farsangi, John F MacGregor and Todd Hoare
Biomacromelecules 2019, Publication Date: November 5, 2019, 
The development of in situ-gelling hydrogels that can enable prolonged protein release is increasingly important due to the emergence of a growing number of protein-based therapeutics. Herein, we describe a high-throughput strategy to fabricate,...
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Simulation of Acoustic Propagation in 3D Viscoelastic Inhomogeneous Media with Application to Medical Shear Wave Elastography
P. S. Bidari, H. Assi, R. S. C. Cobbold, J. Alirezaie and J. Tavakkoli
Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics Vol. 27, No. 03, 1950003 (2019) Research Papers, 
This paper proposes a new numerical framework to simulate ultrasound wave propagation in 3D viscoelastic heterogeneous media based on the elastodynamic wave equation including a 3D second-order time-domain perfectly matched layer formulation. A...
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High-Throughput Synthesis and Characterization of Aryl Silicones Using the Piers-Rubinsztajn Reaction
A.F. Schneider and M.A. Brook
Chemistry–A European Journal 09 October 2019 
Arylsilicones are widely exploited for their thermal and optical properties. The creation of phenylsilicone elastomers with specific physical properties is typically done by a ‘one off’ formulation and test process. We demonstrate that...
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Synthetic presentation of noncanonical Wnt5a motif promotes mechanosensing-dependent differentiation of stem cells and regeneration
R. Li, S. Lin, M.Zhu, Y. Deng, X. Chen, K. Wei, J. Xu, G. Li and L. Bian
Sci Adv 5, 10, eaaw 3896, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw3896
Noncanonical Wnt signaling in stem cells is essential to numerous developmental events. However, no prior studies have capitalized on the osteoinductive potential of noncanonical Wnt ligands to functionalize biomaterials in enhancing the...
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Morphology and composition play distinct and complementary roles in the tolerance of plantar skin to mechanical load
Colin J. Boyle, Magdalena Plotczyk, Sergi Fayos Villalta, Sharad Patel, Shehan Hettiaratchy, Spyros D. Masouros, Marc A. Masen and Claire A. Higgins
Science Advances, 
Plantar skin on the soles of the feet has a distinct morphology and composition that is thought to enhance its tolerance to mechanical loads, although the individual contributions of morphology and composition have never been quantified. Here,...
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Characterization of a novel decellularized bone marrow scaffold as an inductive environment for hematopoietic stem cells
J.E. Romero Bianco, R. Giardini Rosa, A. Congrains-Castillo, P.P. Joazeiro, S.D. Waldman, J.F. Weber, and S.T. Olalla Saad
Biomater. Sci., 2019, Advance Article, first published on 19 Jan 2019, DOI 10.1039/C8BM01503A
Due to the increasing demand for a bone marrow study model, we developed a natural...
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Ultrashort Time to Echo Magnetic Resonance Evaluation of Calcium Pyrophosphate Crystal Deposition in Human Menisci
Finkenstaedt T, Biswas R, Abeydeera NA, Siriwanarangsun P, Healey R, Statum S, Bae WC and Chung CB
Invest Radiol. 2019 Jun. 54(6):349-355.
OBJECTIVES:
In human menisci, we aimed to investigate whether calcium pyrophosphate crystal deposition (CPPD) affects biomechanical and quantitative MR properties, and their zonal distribution.
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Moderate exercise prevents cartilage softening and muscle structural changes in a rat model of obesity
J.L. Rios, J.W. Mather, J. Michaiel, S.M. Mattiello and W. Herzog
OARSI Journal, April 2019 Volume 27, Supplement 1, Page S155
Purpose: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating chronicdisease. Currently, there is no cure or disease modifying treatment for OA.Using a Sprague-Dawley rat model, it has been shown that ahigh-fat/high-sucrose (HFS) diet induced...
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Development of a dispensing based additive manufacturing technique for the creation of alginate bone scatfolds
J.J. Varun
UBC Theses and Dissertations, 2019. 
Bone scaffolds are used to treat large bone defects. There are noted advantages for moving away from the standard of using human bone to create these...
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Automated Indentation of Femoral and Temporomandibular Joints for Characterization of Cartilage Tissue Quality in Fgf2 KO Mice.
Tannin Schmidt
Poster SAT-996. American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, 21 Sep 2019, Orlando, Florida, USA
PURPOSE: Degenerative disorders affecting the mandibular condylar cartilage (MCC) of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), and the articular cartilage (AC) of the knee joint, are common chronic conditions. Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 (FGF2) is a...
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Biomechanical characterization of tibial articular cartilage in Hyp mice, a murine model of osteoarthritis in X-linked hypophosphatemia
Michael J. Desimone, Steven M. Tommasini, Christopher Cape and Carolyn M. Macica
Poster SUN-929. American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, 22 Sep 2019, Orlando, Florida, USA
The clinical picture of adult XLH is dominated by a pervasive, early-onset osteoarthritis (OA). Using a murine XLH model, we have shown that the femoral/tibial joint of Hyp mice lacks the mineralized zone of articular cartilage, a transitional tissue...
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A Col1a2 Mutation Reveals Bone Fragility, Hyperelasticity of Skin and Degeneration of Articular Cartilage in Mice
S. Sim, A. Blease, M. Garon, E. Quenneville and P. Potter
Poster SUN-053. American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, 22 Sep 2019, Orlando, Florida, USA
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Hierarchically Structured, Self-Healing, Fluorescent, Bioactive Hydrogels with Self-Organizing Bundles of Phage Nanofilaments
A. Peivandi, L. Tian, R. Mahabir and Z. Hosseinidoust
Chem. Mater. 201931155442-5449 Publication Date:July 24, 2019 
Bacteriophages are essentially bionanoparticles with a protein coat, the composition of which can be controlled with atomic precision via genetic engineering, a property that makes them superior to synthetic nanoparticles as building blocks for...
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Development of an In Vitro Outer Annulus Fibrosus Cartilage Endplate Model and its Response to Dynamic Mechanical Loading
J. E. Chong
University of Toronto
Tissue-engineering research to date has neglected to address the annulus fibrosus (AF) cartilage endplate (CEP) interface of the intervertebral disc. It was hypothesized that in vitro formed outer AF and cartilage tissues will integrate...
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Bottlebrush polymer compositions, lubricating fluid, porous materials comprising said compositions, and surface bearing said compositions
X. Banquy, J. Faivre, B.R.Shrestha, K. Matyjaszewski, J.Burdynska and F. Moldovan
US Patent App. 16/095,051, 2019
A mixture of polymers with lubricating properties is provided. The polymer can be used to produce a lubricating fluid. They can also be born on a surface or embedded in a porous material. This mixture of polymers comprises (a) a pharmaceutically...
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Setting up a pre-clinical human model for mechanical induced osteoarthritis to investigate potential pharmacological agents
E. Houtman, M. van Hoolwerff, R. Coutinho De Almeida, A. Rodriguez Ruiz, N. Lakenberg, H.E. Suchiman, M. Tuerlings, R.G. Timmermans, R.G. Nelissen, Y.F. Ramos and I. Meulenbelt
Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, April 2019, Volume 27, Supplement 1, Pages S80–S81. 
Purpose: 

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a joint disease characterized by cartilage degeneration and bone spur formation. Due to the fact that there are no disease modifying drugs, OA is placing a high burden on society occurring during...
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Cross-Linked Elastin-like Polypeptide Membranes as a Model for Medial Arterial Calcification
O. Gourgas, L. D. Muiznieks, D. G.Bello, A. Nanci, S.Sharpe and M. Cerruti
Publication Date:June 21, 2019 
Calcium phosphate minerals deposit on the elastin-rich medial layers of arteries in the majority of seniors, diabetic, and chronic kidney disease patients, causing severe cardiovascular complications. There is no cure for medial calcification, and...
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The effect of in vivo chondrocyte depletion on the structural and functional properties of murine articular cartilage
A.O. Masson, J.M. Corpuz, W.B. Edwards and R.J. Krawetz
Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, April 2019, Volume 27, Supplement 1, Page S80
Articular cartilage is an intricate and remarkable tissue found within synovial joints. It is essential for providing low-friction and load bearing during movement, resulting in pain-free mobility. Chondrocytes are the sole cell population present...
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A 3D Bioprinted Meniscus Implant Reinforced by Chitosan/Poly(Vinyl Alcohol) Fibres
E. Kapyla, M. K. Khan, S. Pan, R. Nickmanesh, S. Beyer, J. Ault, J. Hwang, T. Mohamed, and S. Wadsworth
30th Annual Conference of the European Society for Biomaterials, IX-OS31-01, #270, 12 September 2019, Dresden, Germany.
Introduction