Bone scaffold based on biopolymer/carbonate apatite by freeze drying method: Synthesis, characterization, and in vitro cytotoxicity

The global need of biomaterial products especially in bone clinical application increases every year. The gold methods like autograft and allograft have some limitations in the application such as the availability of donor sites, antigenicity issues, the high cost, etc. To solve the problems, many researches and activities in the field of biomaterial have been conducted continuously in the past decades to develop the proper synthetic materials for bone substitutes which have properties similar to bone tissue. In this research, the synthesis of biocomposite for bone scaffold application prepared by freeze drying method has been done successfully. The materials used are biopolymer (alginate and chitosan) and bioceramics (carbonate apatite) with certain mixing variations. SEM result showed that the pores obtained by freeze drying method can mimic the pores of actual bone thus they will be able to resemble cells microenvironment, enhance interface interaction, and support cell proliferation. The existence of carbonate apatite on the scaffold’s surface can be observed with particle size of 0.05 – 1 μm and has been dispersed evenly. These results are in good agreement with FT-IR analysis that indicates the presence of PO₄^3– functional group on the scaffold at wave numbers 569 and 1041.56 cm^–1 and CO₃^2– functional group at wave number 1411.89 cm^–1. The in vitro biological evaluation of HeLa cells which exposed to extract solution of scaffold (in some variations of concentration) indicated that the scaffold obtained was not cytotoxic to the HeLa cells.