Biomimetic fibrous composite membranes for bone tissue engineering

One of the major challenges in biomaterials and tissue engineering is to guide the cell differentiation to the specific phenotype, therefore allow the formation of the tissue of certain type. This can be achieved by manipulating the structural, geometrical and chemical characteristics of the tissue engineering constructs. In our studies we concentrated on the chemical modifications of the polymer based materials for tissue engineering. The primary aim of our study was to incorporate nano size hydroxyapatite (n-HAp) crystals into the polymer fibres and form membranes, which are a core to the construction of novel scaffolds for tissue regeneration. We hypothesised that n-HAp will significantly improve the bioactivity of the polymer based membranes due to the presence of chemical cues. We developed a simple method to fabricate PLDL/n- HAp composite membranes using electrospinning process. The investigation showed that the incorporation of the n-HAp particles in the polymer spinning solution induced changes in the material surface morphology. FTIR analysis confirmed the presence of apatite on the surface of the membrane' fibers. The bioactivity analysis, which was based on SEM observation of the membranes surface, showed that after only 7 days immersion in SBF, the PLDL/n-HAp -membranes were completely covered by the apatite layer. This was not observed for pure PLDL membranes.