Preparation and Characterization of Hyaluronic Acid/ Hydroxyapatite Composite (HA/HAp) Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Three dimensional biodegradable porous polymer/ hydroxyapatite scaffolds play vital role in tissue engineering. This study is focused to develop a highly porous biocompatible composite scaffold using hyaluronic acid (HA) and Hydroxyapatite (HAp). The hyaluronic acid (HA) sponges cross-linked with 1, 4-butanediol diglycidyl ether (BDDE) were synthesized using freeze-drying technique and the mineralization of hydroxyapatite on the HA sponges were carried out by immersing the HA sponges in the simulated body fluid (SBF) solution for various period of time. The morphology of HA/HAp composites were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the presence of hydroxyapatite was confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) studies. The chemical and thermal properties were studied using ATR-FTIR and TGA studies respectively. The results showed that the HA/HAp composites had an open porous structure with pore size in the range of 30–300 μm. Most of the composites showed excellent porosity above 90%, which is an important requirement for tissue engineering applications. The hydroxyapatite crystals were polygonal shaped with sizes in the range of 0.5-5.0 μm. The possible chemical interaction between HA  andHAp was confirmed by FTIR. The mass loss of HA/HAp composites were shown by TGA curves. These results suggest that the HA/HAp composite scaffolds fabricated by freeze-drying method might be a suitable biomaterial for bone tissue engineering applications.