Role of HA and BG in engineering poly(ε‐caprolactone) porous scaffolds for accelerating cranial bone regeneration

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Effects of varied bioactive fillers on the biological behavior of porous polymer/inorganic composite scaffolds are lack of comprehensive comparison and remain elusive. Moreover, composite scaffolds with high porosity suffer from inferior mechanical performance. Herein, high‐pressure molding and salt leaching were employed to prepare poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) composite porous scaffolds loaded with hydroxyapatite (HA) and bioactive glass (BG), respectively. Structural analysis indicated all the porous scaffolds presented interconnected open‐pore structure with the porosity of ~ 87% and pore size of ~ 180 μm, hinging on the amounts and size of porogen. Compared to PCL/HA scaffolds, PCL/BG scaffolds showed ~ 2.3‐fold augment in the water absorption. Attributing to the compact framework, the PCL/HA and PCL/BG porous scaffolds exhibited outstanding compressive modulus, which was notably higher than other PCL composite porous scaffolds reported in literatures. Cells culture results demonstrated that PCL/BG scaffolds displayed higher expression of osteogenic differentiation than PCL and PCL/HA scaffolds. Furthermore, in vivo results showed that more mature bone was formed within PCL/BG scaffolds than PCL/HA scaffolds, manifesting that the introduction of BG accelerated cranial bone regeneration to obtain complete bone healing within a short time. Therefore, these data indicate that PCL/BG scaffolds are more competitive for bone tissue engineering application.
Funding Information
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (51773136, 51803139, 81470720, and 31271032)
  • State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (sklpme2018‐2‐07)

This publication has 43 references indexed in Scilit: