Preparation and Characterization of Fibroin/Chitosan/Hydroxyapatite Porous Scaffold

Abstract

Autograft is a general method used in orthopedic surgery for a bone replacement. However, the disadvantage of this method is the amount of risk factor to the donor sites. Currently, bone tissue engineering is another technique that could be implemented to solve this problem. Artificial bone scaffold generated by bone tissue engineering can be employed in order to accelerate damaged bone regeneration. In fact, this scaffold can be fabricated from synthetic contents such as bioceramics, biopolymers or composite. Three types of biomaterials: Chitosan, Hydroxyapatite (HA) and Fibroin were used to form porous scaffold. This research investigated the preparation of Hydroxyapatite and Fibroin from natural materials. Hydroxyapatite was synthesized from mollusk shell by wet chemical precipitation method. While, Fibroin was extracted from silk worms cocoons. Freeze drying method was employed to fabricate this composite porous scaffold. A mixing ratio of 1:2:1 among Fibroin: Chitosan: HA was studied to evaluate biodegradability, biocompatibility, porosity and pore structure of the output scaffolds. Results show that the output scaffolds have an interconnected porous structure with a pore size around 150-200μm and an average porosity of 94.26%. While the average degradation rate of the scaffold in lysozyme was 10.46% at 7 days. In addition, the biocompatibility test based on XTT assay test, shown that the scaffolds were non-cytotoxicity, which could be good for bone filling application in the future.