New development of carbonate apatite-chitosan scaffold based on lyophilization technique for bone tissue engineering

Carbonate apatite-chitosan scaffolds (CA-ChSs) were fabricated using the lyophilization technique. It was found that ChSs prepared with 200 mg chitosan powder (ChSs(200)) had well-structured three-dimensional architecture with high porosity and good retentive form without brittleness. In addition, it was shown that the number of osteoblast-like cells MC3T3-E1 proliferated on desalinated ChSs(200) was larger than that on the non-desalinated ChSs(200). CA-ChSs were fabricated by adding 100 mg carbonate apatite (CA) to 200 mg chitosan gels followed by freeze-drying (CA(100)ChSs(200)). SEM observation revealed that CA(100)ChSs(200) had favorable three-dimensional porous structures. The number of living cells increased more rapidly on CA(100)ChSs(200) prepared with different amounts of CA than on ChSs. ALP activity significantly increased after day 14 and reached a plateau after day 21 in ChSs(200) and CA(100)ChSs(200). It was concluded that newly developed CA(100)ChSs(200) may be a possible scaffold material for tissue engineering.