Alizarin-Red staining: At the end of Day 28, the cells were fixed using 4% formaldehyde. The fixed cells were washed in PBS to stain further using Alizarin-Red (MERCK, Darmstadt, Germany). The stained cells’ photomicrographs were captured using a 12-megapixel digital camera attached to a Nikon eclipse Ti-U inverted bright field microscope.
Extraction of Alizarin-Red stain for osteogenic quantification—the cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) (MERCK, Darmstadt, Germany) extraction method was employed to extract the stain. Briefly, 350 mg CPC was dissolved in 10 mL of double-distilled water. We added an appropriate amount (2.3 mL) of the prepared CPC solution into each well, and the plate was incubated at 37 °C for 2 h with mild shaking. The plate was read using a microplate reader (infinite 200) at 405 nm wavelength. The absorbance readings were tabulated for statistical analysis.