Preparation and Characterization of Biodegradable β-TCP-based Composite Microspheres as Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds

摘要

Since a small globular particle was first used as support for three-dimensional (3D) growth of anchorage-dependent cells in suspended cultures, a variety of microspheres as tissue engineering scaffolds have been developed. In this paper, β-TCP and chitosan were selected as the components of microspheres due to their biodegradability and osteogenic properties. The biodegradable β-TCP/chitosan composite microspheres were prepared by a solid-in-water-in-oil (s/w/o) emulsion cross-linking method in this paper. The size distribution, surface morphology, and microstructure of the microspheres were evaluated. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the size of the microspheres with good spherical morphology was distributed in the range of 50～200μm. In vitro immersion experiments were carried out to evaluate the degradability of the microspheres, and the results demonstrated that the chitosan/β-TCP composite microspheres were potential materials as tissue engineering scaffolds for bone repair.