Monodispersed Bioactive Glass Nanoclusters with Ultralarge Pores and Intrinsic Exceptionally High miRNA Loading for Efficiently Enhancing Bone Regeneration

Bioactive glass nanoparticles (BGNs) have attracted much attention in drug delivery and bone tissue regeneration, due to the advantages including biodegradation, high bone-bonding bioactivity, and facile large-scale fabrication. However, the wide biomedical applications of BGNs such as efficient gene delivery are limited due to their poor pore structure and easy aggregation. Herein, for the first time, this study reports novel monodispersed bioactive glass nanoclusters (BGNCs) with ultralarge mesopores (10–30 nm) and excellent miRNA delivery for accelerating critical-sized bone regeneration. BGNCs with different size (100–500 nm) are fabricated by using a branched polyethylenimine as the structure director and catalyst. BGNCs show an excellent apatite-forming ability and high biocompatibility. Importantly, BGNCs demonstrate an almost 19 times higher miRNA loading than those of conventional BGNs. Additionally, BGNCs–miRNA nanocomplexes exhibit a significantly high antienzymolysis, enhance cellular uptake and miRNA transfection efficiency, overpassing BGNs and commercial Lipofectamine 3000. BGNCs-mediated miRNA delivery significantly improves the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow stromal stem cells in vitro and efficiently enhances bone formation in vivo. BGNCs can be a highly efficient nonviral vector for various gene therapy applications. The study may provide a novel strategy to develop highly gene-activated bioactive nanomaterials for simultaneous tissue regeneration and disease therapy.