Preparation and Characterization of Integrated Condylar Biomimetic Scaffolds: A Pilot Study

We constructed the bionic mandibular condyle scaffold composite with Chitosan, polycaprolactone and hydroxyapatite CS-PCL-HA and investigated the feasibility in condylar tissue engineering applications. The condyle mold was fabricated by resin materials with rapid prototyping methods and the bionic mandibular condyle scaffold was constructed by solution casting-ice drain. The microstructure, porosity, infrared and X-ray diffraction of the condyle scaffold were studied. The exterior of scaffold was white and hard as condyle, consisting of cartilage scaffold and subchondral bone scaffold. The scanning electron microscopy showed that the scaffold composite were highly bionic in three-dimensional structures with 70-85 % porosity and 40-200 μm aperture, which can be controlled by the size and the number of ice particles. Infrared spectrum showed that with the reduction of HA content, the peak strength also decreased, while X-ray diffraction results demonstrated that with the increase of HA content, the diffraction intensity reduced relatively. The compressive strain and bending strain were increased with the growing of the HA content. In conclusion, the special design of scaffolds has good performance of synthetic materials, which is expected to be applied in autologous tissue engineering as condyle scaffold material.