Multiparametric analysis of the early osteogenic differentiation process in MC3T3 cells

Trauma, injury, disease, or aging occurring in skeletal tissue can lead to considerable health problems and various socio-economic challenges. Existing methods, for replacing or restoring bone tissue have significant limitations and inherent disadvantages. To overcome these issues regenerative medicine and tissue engineering are offering new approaches for de novo skeletal tissue formation, in an attempt to address the unmet needs for bone augmentation and skeletal repair. In this respect, the employment of cells, 3D scaffolds and bioreactor system seems to be a promising alternative. Despite this, conventional methods to assess extracellular matrix mineralization, during the osteogenic differentiation process, have shown some limitations concerning the interpretation of the data. This work aims to evaluate osteogenic differentiation through different lenses, performing a multiparametric analysis useful to understand which method of analysis could be the most cost-effective one. Starting from this specific parameters have been extracted and exploited in order to define an algorithm able to predict in future whether and when extracellular matrix mineralization has occurred.