Katharina Dammer

Bachelor student

Improving the bioactive glass scaffolds’ stability and mechanical properties by coating with biopolymers

 

Supervisors: Usanee Pantulap, Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini

45S5 bioactive glass (45S5 BG) was discovered by L.L. Hench in 1969 [1]. Meanwhile it is well investigated and is applied in clinical settings because of its high bioactivity, osteoconductivity and biodegradability [2]. 45S5 BG scaffolds with high porosity made by the foam replica technique are promising candidates for bone tissue engineering applications. However, such scaffolds have low mechanical properties due to their pore size and interconnected pore structure. The mechanical properties of the scaffolds can be enhanced using natural polymer coatings, for example collagen [2] or gelatin [3]. Further improvements regarding the mechanical properties of bioactive scaffolds could be made by crosslinking the gelatin. In this study different crosslinkers for gelatin coatings will be investigated. The aim is to investigate different gelatin and crosslinker concentrations to find out if there is an optimum in terms of achieving high mechanical properties and retaining high porosity.

[1] L.L. Hench, The story of Bioglass, Journal of Materials Science in Medicine. 17 (2016), DOI: 10.1007/s10856-006-0432-z

[2] J. Hum and A. R. Boccaccini, Collagen as coating material for 45S5 Bioactive Glass-based scaffolds for bone tissue engineering, Int. J. Mol. Sci. 19 (2018) 1807.

[3] T. Reiter et al., Bioactive glass based scaffolds coated with gelatin for the sustained release of icariin, Bioactive Materials 4 (2019) 1-7.