Rapid biomimetic mineralization of keratin scaffold via electrodeposition with potential for bone regeneration

Abstract

For bone regeneration, rapid mineralization is of particular importance in the preparation of biomimetic bone scaffolds, as for avoiding the drawbacks of prolonged mineralization which will cause the loss of growth factors and degradation. In this research, we developed a relatively rapid mineralization approach for constructing biomimetic keratin scaffold that exhibited highly interconnected pore and natural bone mimetic calcium phosphate coating by applying an electrodeposition technique. Mineralized keratin scaffold was obtained by freeze drying followed by electrodeposition for rapid biomimetic mineralization. The mineral coating morphology, component and crystal structure could be controllably tailored by manipulating the deposition electrode, voltage and duration. A satisfying coating of apatite layer on keratin scaffold could be obtained within a couple of hours by electrodeposition. By increasing the voltage and duration, a more favored amount of apatite coating which dominated by HA crystal could be formed. In addition, cell regeneration assay showed that mineralized biomimetic keratin scaffold exhibited more suitable supporting platform for the proliferation and osteoblastic differentiation of MC3T3 cell over pure keratin scaffold. Thus, the rapid electrodeposition mineralization approach presented in this work could be highly desired for fabricating biomimetic scaffolds in which biological molecules were loaded for functional bone tissue engineering applications.