Construction of icariin-loaded bone powder/PLA composite scaffold and its effect on osteogenic differentiation of hADSCs.

Bone defects and nonunion caused by trauma, infection, and tumors remain major clinical challenges. Currently, the tissue-engineering strategy of "seed cells + growth factors + biomaterials," inspired by biomimetic design, offers promising prospects for functional bone regeneration. Icariin (ICA), a bioactive compound derived from traditional Chinese medicine, is cost-effective, stable, sterilization-resistant, and has been shown to promote the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. Although ICA has been preliminarily applied in bone tissue engineering, its osteoinductive effect on human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hADSCs) remains unclear. In this study, ICA was applied in a 2D culture system to evaluate its effects on hADSCs isolated from human adipose tissue. The optimal concentration for osteogenic induction was determined to be 10-7 M. A bone tissue engineering scaffold was fabricated based on ICA combined with defatted and deproteinized bone powder and polylactic acid (PLA) and seeded with fifth-passage hADSCs. The results indicated that all ICA-loaded scaffolds exhibited porosity values above 85 %, with no significant difference compared with the bone powder/PLA scaffold (91.52 %). Furthermore, the ICA-DDBP scaffold containing 10-7 M ICA showed a cell viability exceeding 90 %. These findings suggest that ICA incorporated into scaffold can be gradually released in situ to promote hADSC osteogenic differentiation, highlighting its potential as a novel application of traditional Chinese medicine in bone tissue engineering.