engleski

Porous chitosan/hydroxyapatite composite scaffolds: The effect of in situ synthesized hydroxyapatite on scaffold's microstructure

Repair and regeneration of damaged bone and cartilage draw large attention in tissue engineering. So far, the most promising therapy for defect reparation is based on seeding and in vitro culture of primary osteoblast cells on synthetic or natural three-dimensional scaffolds. High porosity (>90 %) with large pore size (100-200 µm) and interconnected porous structure for cells and nutrients transport is one of the important factors for scaffold engineering. In this work, porous biocomposite scaffolds based on chitosan (CS) and in situ synthesized hydroxyapatite (HA) by freeze-gelation method have been prepared. The HA content in prepared biocomposites was varied from 0 to 60 %. The in situ HA formation was confirmed by X-ray analysis and FTIR spectroscopy, while the effect of HA content on scaffold’s microstructure was imaged by SEM. It was observed that adding inorganic phase into chitosan matrix causes changes on the microstructure from ‘honeycomb’ shaped pores (pure chitosan) to non-defined porous structure (biocomposite).

Chitosan ; Hydroxyapatite ; Scaffold ; Microstructure

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