Modeling and analysis of the degradation of smart biomaterials for dental use, and the development and differentiation of bone cells through the differential culture of mesenchymal cells inoculated in dental scaffols

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is composed of three different research works published in scientific journals and books. Namely, the Chapter 3 of this thesis corresponds to the work entitled "Statistical degradation modelling of Poly(D,L-lactide-coglycolide) copolymers for bioscaffold applications", published in PLOS One journal and authored by Javier Tarrío Saavedra, Yaroslava Robles Bykbaev, Salvador Naya, Silvia Díaz Prado, Sara Quintana, and Francisco Javier García Sabán [1]. The Chapter 4 accounts for the work entitled "An artificial-vision- and statisticallearning- based method for studying the biodegradation of type 1 collagen scaffolds in bone regeneration systems", submited to PeerJ journal and authored by Yaroslava Robles Bykbaev, Salvador Naya, Silvia Díaz Prado, Vladimir Robles Bykbaev, Daniel Calle, Clara Sanjurjo Rodríguez, Luis Garzón, and Javier Tarrío. The nexus of all these works is the modeling the degradation of scaffolds with possible applications in dentistry and tisular engineering. Identifying critical variables for scaffold degradation, detecting the most influencing variables on degradation and measure their importance, and mathematically describing the degradation trend (allowing the degradation degree prediction) are sorne of the goal s of this research. For these purpose, adequate design of experiments and the proper use of statistical techniques (from descriptive to advanced regression modeling) have be en performed. The combination of these techniques have allowed us to study two types of degradation, that due to hydrolysis and degradation due to cellular growth, in two different group of materials, PDLGA and type 1 colla gen (currently used as scaffolds in many applications). In the following lines summaries corresponding tho each work (and corresponding to a different chapter of the thesis) are shown, pointing out in each one the the most relevant achievements.