Cartilage regeneration using hesperidin-containing gellan gum scaffolds

Gellan gum is an FDA-approved heteropolysaccharide, composed of sodium gluconate, rhamnose, and glucose in molar ratios of 1:1:2. It has been widely utilized in tissue engineering because of its biocompatibility and outstanding physicochemical properties such as stability at high temperature transparency, and dynamic elastic modulus. In this study, we prepared 0.7% gellan gum hydrogel scaffolds with different amount (0, 1, 2, 4 mg) of hesperidin to incorporate collagen regeneration and anti-inflammatory effect for cartilage regeneration. The physiochemical and biological characteristics of the scaffolds were evaluated by compressive strength, FTIR, MTT, Bio-SEM, and RT-PCR. Interestingly, the gellan gum scaffold containing 1 mg hesperidin was found to be the most excellent scaffold for cartilage tissue regeneration in terms of compressive strength, cell differentiation, cell viability, and gene expression.