Page 377 - IJB-9-2

International Journal of Bioprinting

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Fabrication of 3D gel-printed β-tricalcium

phosphate/titanium dioxide porous scaffolds for
cancellous bone tissue engineering

Xulin Hu , Hu Li , Liang Qiao , Shuhao Yang , Haoming Wu , Chao Peng , Yamei
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2
1
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Zhang , Hai Lan , Hua Yang *, Kainan Li *
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1 Clinical Medical College and Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu University, Chengdu University,
Chengdu 610081, China
2 The First Affiliated Hospital, and College of Clinical Medicine of Henan University of Science and
Technology, Luoyang 471003, China
3
West China School of Public Health of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
Abstract
Human bone is composed of cortical bone and cancellous bone. The interior portion
of natural bone is cancellous with a porosity of 50%–90%, but the outer layer is made
of dense cortical bone, of which porosity was not higher than 10%. Porous ceramics
were expected to be research hotspot in bone tissue engineering by virtue of their
similarity to the mineral constituent and physiological structure of human bone.
However, it is challenging to utilize conventional manufacturing methods to fabricate
porous structures with precise shapes and pore sizes. Three-dimensional (3D) printing
*Corresponding author: of ceramics is currently the latest research trend because it has many advantages in the
Hua Yang (yangwawa19@163.com) fabrication of porous scaffolds, which can meet the requirements of cancellous bone
Kainan Li strength, arbitrarily complex shapes, and individualized design. In this study, β-tricalcium
(likainan1961cdfy@126.com)
phosphate (β-TCP)/titanium dioxide (TiO ) porous ceramics scaffolds were fabricated by
2
Citation: Hu X, Li H, Qiao L, 3D gel-printing sintering for the first time. The chemical constituent, microstructure, and
et al., 2023, Fabrication of 3D mechanical properties of the 3D-printed scaffolds were characterized. After sintering,
gel-printed β-tricalcium phosphate/
titanium dioxide porous scaffolds for a uniform porous structure with appropriate porosity and pore sizes was observed.
cancellous bone tissue engineering. Besides, biological mineralization activity and biocompatibility were evaluated by
Int J Bioprint. 9(2): 673. in vitro cell assay. The results demonstrated that the incorporation of TiO (5 wt%)
https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.v9i2.673 2
significantly improved the compressive strength of the scaffolds, with an increase of
Received: October 17, 2022 283%. Additionally, the in vitro results showed that the β-TCP/TiO scaffold had no
Accepted: November 02, 2022 2
Published Online: January 19, toxicity. Meanwhile, the adhesion and proliferation of MC3T3-E1 cells on scaffolds were
2023 desirable, revealing that the β-TCP/TiO scaffolds can be used as a promising candidate
2
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). for repair scaffolding in orthopedics and traumatology.
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Keywords: β-tricalcium phosphate; Titanium dioxide; 3D printing; Porous scaffolds;
License, permitting distribution Bone tissue engineering
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: Whioce
Publishing remains neutral with 1. Introduction
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional The aging of population and an increase in life expectancy worldwide is accompanied
affiliations. by a surge of bone-associated diseases, including catagma, osteoporosis, and bone

Volume 9 Issue 2 (2023) 369 https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.v9i2.673