Degradation and biological evaluation of immobilized-electrospun polycaprolactone for bone tissue engineering

Abstract

Polymeric scaffolds for bone tissue engineering application have been produced and developed to mimic the native extracellular matrix (ECM). In this study, polycaprolactone (PCL), the promising biodegradable polymer candidate in this field, have been used to produce fibrous scaffolds, fabricated by electrospinning technique. The obtained PCL fiber mats were first modified the surface to promote their biocompatibility and the subsequent immobilization of bovine serum albumin (BSA) onto their surfaces. The result shows that the aminolyzing time did not influence on the mechanical properties of PCL fibrous scaffolds. In order to meet the concept of being scaffolds, biomaterials are expected to have the rate of degradation matching the rate of tissue regeneration. Hence, the degradation behaviours play an important role in the tissue engineering. In this study, PCL nanofibrous scaffolds have been systematically investigated up to 30 days in enzymatic solution at 37ºC. 'The scaffolds were examined in terms of weight loss and pH change, also using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) were investigated. Moreover, the PCL fibrous scaffolds were evaluated in vitro with mouse calvaria-derived preosteoblastic cells (MC3T3-E1). The biological evaluation illustrated that no toxic was released and harm to cells.