Undoubtedly, choosing the right set-up for your experiment is one of the most critical steps when working in science. The problems that we scientists want to solve, the innovation that we want to bring, are almost always very complex phenomena. This is why we have to simplify them into small experiments from which we can build our thesis.
My research is based on biomaterials developed for orthopedic purposes, therefore, I work a lot with bone cells, bone related assays, and whatnot. So, if you are searching for a handy guide on how to evaluate osteoimmunomodulatory properties of biomaterial you have come to the right place. I always suggest to my student to read and fully understand a review article by Mestres et al [1], before starting to do some lab work. The title of the paper is: “A practical guide for evaluating the osteoimmunomodulatory properties of biomaterials”. In this case, I know personally some of the authors so perhaps I am a little bit biased, but I will let you decide should you want to go through it.
In my opinion, this paper contains all the information needed to someone that is trying to approach to the bone-biomaterials world. It contains background and advanced knowledge about the interaction between immune cells and bone cells, the fracture healing and the bone remodelling processes and also a lot of information about cell types, methodologies and cellular assays to run in vitro testing on your biomaterial.
So should you want to change your in vitro experimental approach, take a look at this amazing work.
Header Image: Graphical Abstract of A practical guide for evaluating the osteoimmunomodulatory properties of biomaterials [1].
References:
[1] Mestres et al (2022). A practical guide for evaluating the osteoimmunomodulatory properties of biomaterials. Acta Biomaterialia. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2021.05.038.
This article was written by Niccoló De Berardinis as part of an ongoing series of scientific communications written and curated by BioTrib’s Early Stage Researchers.
Niccoló is researching Bioimaging of biomaterials and biological characterization of 3D-printed alloys for reconstructive surgery at Uppsala University, Sweden.