Bioactive and biocompatible porous scaffold materials with adjustable pore structures and drug delivery capability are one of the key elements in bone tissue engineering. In this work, bioactive and biocompatible sodium alginate (SA)/hydroxyapatite (HAP) macroporous scaffolds are facilely and effectively fabricated based on 3D printing of the pre‐crosslinked SA/HAP hydrogels followed by further crosslinking to improve the mechanical properties of scaffolds. The pore structures and porosity (>80%) of the porous scaffolds can be readily tailored by varying the formation conditions. Furthermore, the in vitro biomineralization tests show that the bioactivity of the porous scaffolds is effectively enhanced by the addition of HAP nanoparticles into the scaffold matrix. Furthermore, the anti‐inflammatory drug curcumin is loaded into the porous scaffolds and the in vitro release study shows the sustainable drug release function of the porous scaffolds. Moreover, mouse bone mesenchymal stem cells (mBMSCs) are cultured on the porous scaffolds, and the results of the in vitro biocompatibility experiment show that the mBMSCs can be adhered well on the porous scaffolds. All of the results suggest that the bioactive and biocompatible SA/HAP porous scaffolds have great application potential in bone tissue engineering.
Polylactic acid (PLA) has become a popular polymer material due to its superior biocompatibility. At present, there are a few relevant research on heterogeneous bone powder. Besides, the poor dispersibility and adhesivity of inorganic particles in the organic phase remains a problem. In this study, the pork bone powders were modified with N-butanol to improve its dispersibility and compatibility in the PLA matrix. In addition, polybutylene succinate-coterephthalates (PBSA) was applied as a flexibilizer to further reinforce the mechanical properties of materials. The composite filaments with a diameter of 1.75 ± 0.05 mm containing 10 wt% of modified bone powder, 10 wt% PBSA and 80 wt% PLA were prepared by a melt blending method. The obtained results showed that modified particles were uniformly dispersed within the PLA matrix and improved the mechanical properties of the composite filaments with a tensile strength of 48.5 ± 0.2 MPa and a bending strength of 79.1 ± 0.1 MPa and a notch impact strength of 15.8 ± 0.3 kJ/m 2. And the prepared composite materials contained low cytotoxicity, high biocompatibility and printability, which verified the feasibility of it in 3D printing personalized bone repair applications. This provides a theoretical basis for further research on the effect of bone repair in vivo. Therefore, the composite material will have potential applications such as making customized bones and bone scaffolds by three dimensional printing technology.
Biocompatible porous scaffolds with adjustable pore structures, appropriate mechanical properties and drug loading properties are important components of bone tissue engineering.
The development of light‐based three‐dimensional (3D) printing has changed the manufacturing processes from various materials. The advantages of printing using customized materials are gradually highlighted due to excellent and reliable precision, high repeatability, and wide range of build materials, which enable customized materials to be use in aerospace, biomedical, engineering, and other fields. Due to the existence of acrylate group or epoxy group, most of the commonly used photoactive macromolecules have the main limitations of poor water solubility and/or high biological stimulation, severely constraining the widespread application of these materials in biomanufacturing. To overcome these challenges, a natural hydrogel was modified in this study to achieve a new photocurable material with good biocompatibility and photocrosslinking activity. In particular, methacrylate‐carboxymethyl cellulose (Me‐CMC) was esterified by hydroxyl groups on the long chains of CMC, and hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA)/acrylamide (Am) was added as the crosslinking reaction point between the long molecular chains. Thus, networked structures of this biocompatible material can be formed by photo crosslinking in digital light processing (DLP). The developed composite hydrogel can facilitate the rapid prototyping and high precision manufacturing. The mechanical toughness, swelling property, and microstructures of the composite hydrogel were tunable by changing HEMA/Am content. In addition, it was found that cell survival rate of this photocurable composite hydrogel was good by culturing bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) with the material and, cells proliferated significantly in a short time (7 days), which proved the biocompatibility of the proposed material.
The biodegradable and bioactive bioscaffolds with suitable hierarchical structure, customized shape, and mechanical performance have great potential for biomedical applications especially in tissue engineering field. However, controllable and facile preparation of the related porous scaffolds remains obvious challenge. In this study, poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL)-embedded hydroxyapatite (HAP) nanoparticles/collagen hierarchical scaffolds are facilely prepared basing on 3D printing of the pre-crosslinked oil in water type Pickering high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) hydrogel. To be specific, in the HAP nanoparticle stabilized Pickering HIPEs, the aqueous phase contains collagen and genipin, and the oil phase is dichloromethane solution of PCL. After the pre-crosslinking of aqueous phase, the prepared Pickering HIPE turns into emulsion hydrogel with high viscosity and shear thinning characteristics, which can be individually printed and then freeze dried to produce hierarchical scaffolds with the designed structures. The related multiscale pore structures are composed of mm-scale macropores and μm-scale micropores, and the related porosity is higher than 84%. Increasing PCL content obviously enhances the compression stress of scaffolds, particularly the compressive stress of porous scaffold prepared with PCL content of 14 w/v% is about 9 times as large as that of porous scaffold without PCL. The results of in vitro mineralization and cell culture assay show that the porous scaffolds have favorable apatite formation ability and biocompatibility. Thus, the prepared hierarchical scaffolds with the designed structures, customized shape and adjustable performance are promising potential applications in bone tissue engineering.
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