Synthesis and characterization of bioactive glass coated forsterite scaffold for tissue engineering applications

In recent years forsterite scaffolds have been studied for bone regeneration. Many attempts have been focused on preparing highly porous scaffolds with appropriate mechanical strength and bioactivity. This paper proposes a simple way to improve the compressive strength and bioactivity of forsterite scaffolds by coating them with bioactive glass. Results showed that the scaffolds exhibited high porosity (up to 78%) with pores diameters in the range of 70-245 mm. The maximum values of compressive strength and elastic modulus of the prepared scaffolds were found to be about 7.8 MPa and 309 MPa, respectively. In vitro test in the simulated body fluid proved the good bioactivity of the bioactive glass coated forsterite scaffold while bone like apatite formation started from the first day of soaking, and apatite covered the entire surface and inner wall of the scaffolds pores at short immersion time. The obtained scaffolds provided good mechanical support with remarkable bioactivity so they could be used as tissue engineering scaffolds for load bearing applications. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.