PCL/alginate composite scaffolds for hard tissue engineering: fabrication, characterization, and cellular activities

Alginates have been used widely in biomedical applications because of good biocompatibility, low cost, and rapid gelation in the presence of calcium ions. However, poor mechanical properties and fabrication-ability for three-dimensional shapes have been obstacles in hard-tissue engineering applications. To overcome these shortcomings of alginates, we suggest a new composite system, consisting of a synthetic polymer, poly(ε-caprolactone), and various weight fractions (10-40 wt %) of alginate. The fabricated composite scaffolds displayed a multilayered 3D structure, consisting of microsized composite struts, and they provided a 100% offset for each layer. To show the feasibility of the scaffold for hard tissue regeneration, the composite scaffolds fabricated were assessed not only for physical properties, including surface roughness, tensile strength, and water absorption and wetting, but also in vitro osteoblastic cellular responses (cell-seeding efficiency, cell viability, fluorescence analyses, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, and mineralization) by culturing with preosteoblasts (MC3T3-E1). Due to the alginate components in the composites, the scaffolds showed significantly enhanced wetting behavior, water-absorption (∼12-fold), and meaningful biological activities (∼2.1-fold for cell-seeding efficiency, ∼2.5-fold for cell-viability at 7 days, ∼3.4-fold for calcium deposition), compared with a pure PCL scaffold.