Diopside modified porous polyglycolide scaffolds with improved properties

Polyglycolide (PGA) is considered an attractive candidate for bone regeneration because of its good biodegradability and biocompatibility. However, its insufficient mechanical strength and inadequate bioactivity limit its applications. In this study, diopside (DIOP) was incorporated into PGA scaffolds to enhance the mechanical and biological properties. The porous scaffolds were fabricated via selective laser sintering (SLS). The effect of the DIOP content on the microstructure, mechanical properties, bioactivity as well as cytocompatibility of the porous scaffolds was studied. The results showed that DIOP particles were homogenously distributed within the PGA matrix, which contained up to 10 wt%. This led to an improvement of 171.2% in compressive strength and 46.2% in compressive modulus. In vitro studies demonstrated that the highest apatite forming ability was obtained on the scaffold surfaces with the highest amount of DIOP after soaking in simulated body fluid (SBF), suggesting that the bioactivity of the scaffolds increased with increasing DIOP. In addition, a cytocompatibility study showed that the scaffolds exhibited a higher degree of cell attachment, growth and differentiation than the pure PGA scaffolds. These indicated that the PGA scaffolds modified with DIOP possessed suitable properties which could be used for bone tissue regeneration.