Wheat bran aqueous extract contains the ingredients for brushite formation

Brushite is a calcium phosphate with a wide variety of applications, one of which is in bone cement, used to anchor artificial joints or for bone regeneration.

Interestingly, spherical forms of brushite can be spontaneously formed using wheat bran aqueous extract, a common byproduct from the food industry.

Carreño-Márquez et al. explored the mechanism by which this extract could be turned into spherical brushite and the latter doped with zinc for a more sustainable process.

“Zinc has a role in the spherical form of brushite crystals, so we hypothesized that the zinc naturally present in the wheat bran aqueous extracts could also be involved in forming brushite,” said author René Renato Balandrán-Quintana.

To determine this, the researchers added zinc to a solution of wheat bran extract and calcium ions.

In dialyzed wheat bran extracts, where elements such as potassium, sodium, and silicon were removed from the wheat bran extract, spherical brushite formed only without external zinc, likely due to the removal of most phosphates, which hindered formation. However, traces of phosphates and non-dialyzable zinc created a spherical shape.

Zinc was found in the synthesized brushite from the non-dialyzed extracts, even in the absence of additional zinc. The authors concluded that zinc plays a significant role in the synthesis of spherical brushite from bran extracts. Furthermore, they discovered that morphology and crystal arrangement could be altered by adjusting the zinc concentration.

“The fact that brushite is doped with zinc gives it added value, since zinc has antibacterial properties that could be exploited if it were to be used as an ingredient in formulations for bone regeneration,” said Balandrán-Quintana.

Source: “Factors behind the spontaneous synthesis of spherical brushite from wheat bran aqueous extract: The role of zinc,” by Iván Jalil Antón Carreño-Márquez, René Renato Balandrán-Quintana, José Antonio Azamar-Barrios, Ana María Mendoza-Wilson, Gabriela Ramos-Clamont Montfort, and Daniela Denisse Castro-Enríquez, Biointerphases (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0004184 .