Fabrication of three-dimensional porous scaffold based on collagen fiber and bioglass for bone tissue engineering

An ideal scaffold for bone tissue engineering should have interconnected porous structure, good biocompatibility, and mechanical properties well-matched with natural bones. Collagen is the key component in the extracellular matrix (ECM) of natural bones, and plays an important role in bone regeneration. The biological activity of collagen has promoted it to be an advantageous biomaterial for bone tissue engineering; however, the mechanical properties of these scaffolds are insufficient and the porous structures are not stable in the wet state. An effective strategy to solve this problem is to fabricate a hybrid scaffold of biologically derived and synthetic material, which have the necessary bioactivity and mechanical stability needed for bone synthesis. In this work, a three-dimensional macroporous bone scaffold based on collagen (CO) fiber and bioglass (BG) is fabricated by a slurry-dipping technique, and its relevant mechanical and biological properties are evaluated. The CO/BG scaffold is interconnected with a porosity of 81 ± 4.6% and pore size of 40-200 μm. Compared with CO scaffold, water absorption value of CO/BG scaffold decreases greatly from 889% to 52%, which significantly alleviates the swelling behavior of collagen and improves the stability of scaffold structure. The CO/BG scaffold has a compression strength of 5.8 ± 1.6 MPa and an elastic modulus of 0.35 ± 0.01 Gpa, which are well-matched with the mechanical properties of trabecular bones. In vitro cell assays demonstrate that the CO/BG scaffold has good biocompatibility to facilitate the spreading and proliferation of human bone marrow stromal cells. Hence, the CO/BG scaffold is promising for bone tissue engineering application.