Microstructure design and degradation performance in vitro of three-dimensional printed bioscaffold for bone tissue engineering

In bone tissue engineering, three-dimensional printed biological scaffolds play an important role in the development of bone regeneration. The ideal scaffolds should have the ability to match the bone degradation rate and osteogenic ability. This article optimizes the unit cell model of the microstructure including spherical pore, gyroid, and topology to explore degradation performance of scaffolds. Boolean operation of array microstructure unit cells and selected part of a computer-aided design (CAD) femur model are adopted to create a reconstructed scaffold model. Polylactic acid/β-tricalcium phosphate/hydroxyapatite scaffolds with spherical pore, gyroid, and topology-optimized structures are manufactured by three-dimensional printing utilizing the composition of bio-ink including polylactic acid, β-tricalcium phosphate, and hydroxyapatite. After degradation of the scaffolds in vitro for several days, the mechanical properties are analyzed to study the effects of different microstructures on the degradation properties. The results show that the gyroid scaffolds with favorable degradability still maintain excellent mechanical properties after degradation. Mechanical properties of the scaffolds with topology-optimized structure and spherical pore microstructure scaffolds have a significant decrease after degradation.