Bone Morphogenic Growth Factor Incorporated 3D-Printed Polycaprolactone Scaffolds for Craniomaxillofacial Regeneration

Objectives: With the advent of three-dimensional (3D) printing as a promising technique to design customized scaffolds for bone tissue engineering, various approaches have been examined to tune their required features to achieve successful regeneration. One of tehse approaches are using growth factor in the structure of the 3D-printed scaffold. Bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) growth factors have been demonstrated to play important roles in bone regeneration. Among BMPs, BMP-2 has been known to be one of the most potentially effective osteoinductive substances for enhancing bone formation in vivo, which can also induce osteogenic differentiation of stem cells. The goal of this study is developing BMP incorporated 3D-printed polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffold for potential craniomaxillofacial bone regeneration.
Methods: PCL scaffolds were printed through the melt extrusion technique using a commercial 3D-Bioplotter^® system and BMP-2 was incorporated to the scaffolds through oxidative treatment. The laser microscopy and mechanical testing were used to characterize the scaffolds. The scaffolds were studied in vitro for cellular activity over three weeks.
Results: The micrograph of 3D printed PCL scaffolds revealed a reproducible pattern and interconnected pores in the range of 350-450 μm. Young’s Modulus and porosity of scaffolds was measured to be 52±4 % and 81±5 MPa. It was found that BMP-2 incorporation significantly improves cellular activity.
Conclusions: The obtained results indicate that incorporation of bone morphogenic growth factor into 3D-printed polycaprolactone scaffolds will be an effective approach for treatment of bone defects.