Adeno-associated virus-coated allografts: a novel approach for cranioplasty

Bone autografts are considered the gold standard for cranioplasty, although they lead to co-morbidity. Bone allografts are more easily obtained but have low osteogenic potential and fail to integrate into healthy bone. Previously, we showed that, by coating long-bone allografts with freeze-dried recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vector encoding for an osteogenic gene, enhanced osteogenesis and bone integration were achieved. In this study our aim was to evaluate the bone repair potential of calvarial autografts and allografts coated with either single-stranded rAAV2 vector (SS-rAAV-BMP2) or self-complementary pseudotyped vector (SC-rAAV-BMP2) encoding for bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)2 in a murine cranioplasty model. The grafts were implanted into critical defects in the calvariae of osteocalcin/luciferase (Oc/Luc) transgenic mice, which allowed longitudinal monitoring of osteogenic activity using bioluminescence imaging (BLI). Our results showed that the bioluminescent signal of the SC-rAAV-BMP2-coated allografts was 40% greater than that of the SS-rAAV-BMP2-coated allografts (p?