Research and analysis of the properties of bredigite-based 3D-printed bone scaffolds.

ABSTRACT

The use of bone tissue-engineered scaffolds for repairing bone defects has become extremely common. Bone tissue-engineered scaffolds should have good mechanical properties, a pore structure similar to that of natural bone, appropriate biodegradability, and good biocompatibility to provide attachment sites for growth factors and seed cells. They also need to exhibit special functions such as osteoconductivity and osteoinduction. In this study, the mechanical, degradation, and biological properties of bredigite were studied by using a triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) model structure. Pressure tests on bone tissue-engineered scaffolds showed that the mechanical properties of TPMS scaffolds were significantly better than those of open-rod scaffolds with the same porosity. By analyzing the biological properties, we found that the TPMS model had better protein adsorption ability than the open-rod model, the cells could better adsorb on the surface of the TPMS scaffold, and the proliferation number and proliferation rate of the TPMS model were higher than those of the open-ended rod model.