Study on the fabrication and performance of hierarchical porous 3D printed PCL-based artificial bone scaffold with anti-bacterial effect

Abstract

Nonunion and large bone defects caused by trauma, tumor resection, and other bone diseases pose great challenges for clinical treatment. In this work, we fabricated a hierarchical porous scaffold mimicking the natural bone in structure and component. The inner MC/PCL/VCM (MCP-V) scaffold with pore sizes of 10–30 μm was prepared by vacuum freeze-drying, which has drug loading and mimics the bone component and structure. Then outer PT scaffold with pore sizes of 400–500 μm was prepared and a hole reserved for embedding the prepared MCP-V scaffold by 3D printing. The results showed that the compressive strength increased from 1.6 ± 0.01 MPa to 11.0 ± 0.38 MPa, and the compressive modulus increased from 1.1 ± 0.40 MPa to 12.4 ± 0.42 MPa, separately. As the variation of porosity for scaffolds, the cumulative drug release percentage decreased from (55.3 ± 1.43) % to (44.3 ± 2.47) % at 6 days. Furthermore, CCK-8 and the Live/Dead assay were utilized to assess the viability of MC3T3-E1 cells on scaffolds, which revealed no significant cytotoxicity. The hierarchical scaffold meets the mechanical requirement of cancellous bone, with slow drug release properties and excellent cytocompatibility, providing an effective repair strategy for clinical bone defects.