Polycaprolactone-Hydroxyapatite Composite Membrane Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

Bone tissue engineering typically involves the use of porous, bioresorbable scaffolds to serve as temporary, three-dimensional scaffolds to guide cell attachment, differentiation, proliferation, and subsequent tissue regeneration. In this study we developed a composite membrane scaffold by phase inversion technique by using biodegradable polyester, Polycaprolactone (PCL), with hydroxyapatite (HA) in order to develop novel controlled nanostructured biomaterials for bone tissue engineering applications.After preparation, membrane scaffolds were characterized in order to evaluate its morphological, physico-chemical and mechanical properties and then used for the cell culture. Our experimental design consists to apply the knowledge of natural bone tissue remodelling in an in vitro membrane biohybrid system. We used human mesenchymal stem cells for culture in the membrane scaffolds inducing the differentiation in osteoblasts and human monocytes to trigger osteoclastogenesis. Osteoclastic resorption of the scaffold material would lead to subsequent induction of osteoblasts and faster bone formation with mesenchymal stem cells. Our results show that osteoblasts and osteoclasts were successfully differentiated in the developed PCL-HA membrane scaffold. This membrane system will lead to insights in the creation of a controllable osteoinductive microenvironment based on the specific properties (e.g. basic composition, surface chemistry, architecture) and on the function (resorption coupled to proliferation and differentiation) of defined cellular systems.