Design and Fabrication of Mineral-Based Porous Microcarrier for Bone Tissue Engineering

Objective: Currently, using bicompatible and injectable poly-meric microcarriers as one of the efficient methods to trans-fer cells and active agents has gained much attention for bone regenerative medicine. However, they have some drawbacks such as weak mechanical stability and lack of mineral materi-als, which are the major ingredients of the bone tissues. Accord-ingly, it is expected that mimicking the chemical and physical structure of bone tissues could be valuable in their medical ap-plications.Materials and Methods: Herein, a new porous biodegradable microcarrier (MCs) made of silk fibroin-oxidized alginate-bioactive glass was fabricated by electrospraying method. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to study the quantitative influence of process parameters, including blend ratio, voltage, and syringe pump flow rate on MCs diameter, porosity and density and the optimized condition for MCs fab-rication was proposed.Results: Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis re-vealed that the prepared MCs have a spherical shape with the size of ۵۰۰ μm showing a highly porous structure. Incorpora-tion of bioactive glass in the MCs ingredients provided suitable bioactivity for osteogenesis application.Conclusion: Such porous MCs may be considered as promising injectable cell carriers for bone tissue engineering application.