Design and characterization of poly-ε-caprolactone electrospun fibers incorporated with α-TCP nanopowder as a potential guided bone regeneration membrane

Abstract

Periodontitis can lead to the destruction of oral mucosa. Therefore, in order to improve tissue/bone regeneration, it is important to facilitate the process of attachment and proliferation of the cells. Considerable efforts had been devoted toward the development of electrospun membranes, as guided bone regeneration (GBR), which are based on poly (ε -caprolactone) (PCL). However, most of previous membranes have lacked the structural and mechanical strength and toughness to engineer bone tissue constructs with suitable biocompatibility functions. Here, we developed bioactive and relatively robust hybrid membranes composed of α-tricalcium phosphate (α-TCP) nanopowder embedded PCL electrospun fibers. Incorporation of various concentrations of α-TCP nanopowder from 0 to 2 wt% within the PCL membranes notably improved tensile strength and toughness. In a nutshell we concluded that PCL-α-TCP membranes could potentially be used to develop clinically relevant constructs for bone tissue engineering.