Preparation Of Biomimetic Multilayered Cartilage Scaffolds

Articular cartilage, located in the joints between bones, bears high strength force frequently, which resulted in high possibility of cartilage damage. However, the ability of articular cartilage to repair itself was limited. Thus, once it gets any pathology or disease, the cartilage will be hard to restore, what is more resulted in cartilage becoming vestigial. In the present study, a novel biomimetic multi-deck scaffold was fabricated through basic theory of tissue engineering, and then the scaffold was inserted into the articular cartilage in order to repair the cartilage lesion.Rat-tail collagen and chitosan have great biocompatibility and degradability, and also have been wildly used in the realm of biomaterial. Thus they were selected as the raw materials of scaffold in the present study. Collagen and chitosan solutions were blended and then freeze-dried to form special shape as the cartilage layer of scaffold. Then it was combined with the PLA/bone dust material to obtain the biomimetic multi-deck scaffold.The cartilage layer and osteoplaque of the scaffold were characterized by scanning electronic microscopy. The result demonstrates that the scaffold had proper porous diameter and the pores were distributed homogeneously inside of the scaffold. Not only did perpendicular pores find, but also round pores were viewed in Osteoplaque layer. Moreover, the surface of the pores was rough. All the morphology properties will help the attached growth of cell. When the rat cartilage cells were seeded into the scaffold, the cells attached and distributed in everywhere of the scaffold, which indicates that the multi-deck scaffold oriented the growth of the cartilage cells. Consequently, the scaffold was of help for cell growth and also had great biocompability.Besides, the pyrogenity, cytotoxicity, vitro cytotoxicity-test and biocompability of the biomimetic multi-deck scaffold was studied, and the results approved the out-standing biocompability of the scaffold and can be utilized to repair the cartilage damage. This biomimetic multi-deck scaffold was a promising bioinspired material for cartilage repair application in the future.