Influence of Microarchitecture on Osteoconduction and Mechanics of Porous Titanium Scaffolds Generated by Selective Laser Melting

Bone regeneration is naturally based on bone forming cells, osteoinduction by diverse growth factors, and osteoconduction. The latter one used as term in this study is the ingrowth of bone in 3D structures, which leads to an optimal case in creeping substitution of the scaffold by newly formed bone. Autologous bone is still the gold standard for bone substitutes. In most cases, newly developed bone substitutes consist of calcium phosphate, since hydroxyapatite is the main component of bone and mimics cancellous bone in microstructure. In this study, we wanted to elucidate the optimal microarchitecture for osteoconduction and determine compression strength and Young's Modulus of the selected architectures. Selective laser melting of titanium was used as tool to generate diverse architectures in a repetitive and precise way. To link 3D scaffold architecture to biological readouts, bone ingrowth, bone to implant contact, and defect bridging of noncritical-sized defects in the calvarial bone of rabbits were determined. In this series, 5 different microarchitectures were tested with pore sizes ranging from 700 to 1300 mu m and constrictions between 290 and 700 mu m. To our surprise, all microstructures showed the same biological response of excellent osteoconduction. However, the mechanical yield strength of these structures differed by the factor of three and reached up to three times the strength of cancellous bone at a porosity of 72.3-88.4%. These results suggest that the microarchitecture of bone substitutes can be optimized toward mechanical strength in a wide range of constrictions and pore sizes without having a negative influence on osteoconduction.