Towards the development and characterization of an easy handling sheet-like biohybrid bone substitute.

We designed a sheet-like bone substitute capable of adapting to different geometries and becoming a standard tissue-engineered process for bone surgery. Preosteoblastic cells were seeded on to a monolayer of calcium phosphate granules and cultured in a flat parallelepipedic cell culture chamber for 1 month. From the various diameters of the granules examined, the 80-200 mu m group exhibited the most homogeneous performances regarding both biological (cell morphology, viability, differentiation, and simple metabolic activity) and mechanical (cohesion and stress-strain behavior) properties. This sheet was easy to handle after extraction from the culture chamber and showed versatile geometry and flexibility, making it easy to use for surgeons, especially for small defects of the maxillofacial area.