Abstract
Poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) is a biodegradable polyester that has received great attentions in clinical and biomedical applications as sutures, drug delivery tool, and implantable scaffold material. Silica aerogel is a material composed of SiO2that has excellent physical properties for use in drug release formulations and biomaterials for tissue engineering. The current study addresses a composite of silica aerogel with PCL as a potential bone scaffold material for bone tissue engineering. The biocompatibility evaluation of this composite indicates that the presence of silica aerogel effectively prevented any cytotoxic effects of the PCL membrane during extended tissue culture periods and improved the survival, attachment, and growth of 3T3 cells and primary mouse osteoblastic cells. The beneficial effect of silica aerogel may be due to neutralization of the acidic condition that develops during PCL degradation. Specifically, it appears that silica aerogel to PCL wt/wt ratio at 0.5 : 1 maintains a constant pH environment for up to 4 weeks and provides a better environment for cell growth.
Highlights
Poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) is one of the polyester polymers that possess several advantages including benign biocompatibility, low cost, biodegradability, and easy fabrication
The results clearly showed that an increase in the silica aerogel ratio in the composite correlated with the elevation of pH
Since the acidic degradation product of PCL restrains the growth of cells or tissues, we hypothesize that addition of silica aerogel to PCL to form a PCL-silica aerogel composite material may neutralize the acidic condition that results from degradation of PCL and optimize the tissue repair microenvironment to allow cell growth and tissue regeneration
Summary
Poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) is one of the polyester polymers that possess several advantages including benign biocompatibility, low cost, biodegradability, and easy fabrication. Aerogels are materials with extremely high porosity and a high surface area [9]. They are usually produced by supercritical extraction of a stable gel using sol-gel technology [10, 11]. Aerogels have useful properties such as high heat insulation [12, 13], low refractive index [14, 15], and dielectric constant close to gas properties [16, 17]. Silica aerogel is a material composed of SiO2 with physical properties that include (1) amorphous properties with extremely low bulk density (0.003–0.35 g/cm3), (2) optical transparency that facilitates the identification of captured material(s) within the aerogel, (3) high thermal insulation, and (4) light weight. Silica aerogel exhibits a high surface area with a structure comprised of three-dimensional beaded connections of silica particles with several nanometers in diameter, forming
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