Fabrication and cell affinity of biomimetic structured PLGA/articular cartilage ECM composite scaffold

J Mater Sci Mater Med. 2011 Mar;22(3):693-704. doi: 10.1007/s10856-011-4248-0. Epub 2011 Feb 3.

Abstract

An ideal scaffold for cartilage tissue engineering should be biomimetic in not only mechanical property and biochemical composition, but also the morphological structure. In this research, we fabricated a composite scaffold with oriented structure to mimic cartilage physiological morphology, where natural nanofibrous articular cartilage extracellular matrix (ACECM) was used to mimic the biochemical composition, and synthetic PLGA was used to enhance the mechanical strength of ACECM. The composite scaffold has well oriented structure and more than 89% of porosity as well as about 107 μm of average pore diameter. The composite scaffold was compared with ACECM and PLGA scaffolds. Cell proliferation test showed that the number of MSCs in ACECM and composite scaffolds was noticeably bigger than that in PLGA scaffold, which was coincident with results of SEM observation and cell viability staining. The water absorption of ACECM and composite scaffolds were 22.1 and 10.2 times respectively, which was much higher than that of PLGA scaffolds (3.8 times). The compressive modulus of composite scaffold in hydrous status was 1.03 MPa, which was near 10 times higher than that of hydrous ACECM scaffold. The aforementioned results suggested that the composite scaffold has the potential for application in cartilage tissue engineering.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biomimetics*
  • Cartilage, Articular / metabolism*
  • Cell Proliferation
  • Cell Survival
  • Extracellular Matrix / metabolism*
  • Immunohistochemistry / methods
  • Lactic Acid / chemistry*
  • Mesenchymal Stem Cells / cytology
  • Microscopy, Electron, Scanning / methods
  • Nanostructures / chemistry
  • Polyglycolic Acid / chemistry*
  • Polylactic Acid-Polyglycolic Acid Copolymer
  • Porosity
  • Rabbits
  • Stress, Mechanical
  • Tissue Engineering / methods
  • Tissue Scaffolds / chemistry*

Substances

  • Polylactic Acid-Polyglycolic Acid Copolymer
  • Polyglycolic Acid
  • Lactic Acid