Osteogenesis of Porous Bioceramics Scaffolds Consisted of Hydroxyapatite Spherules after Implanted in Different Non-Osseous Sites

The interconnected porous scaffolds are crucial to support the attachment, differentiation, proliferation of cells so to construct 3-dimensional (3-D) tissues. lip to now, there are several approaches to prepare porous scaffolds. In our experiments, we designed a novel porous bioceramic scaffold, called the hydroxyapatite (HA) spherule scaffold, by accumulating HA spherules in ail HA porous tube to establish an interconnected porous structure which call be reconstructed exactly. The porous HA tube was manufactured by polymer sponge template while HA spherules were prepared by sol-gel process. In the animal experiment, the HA spherule scaffolds were implanted at 2 different non-osseous sites such as Muscle and abdominal cavity in dogs. The new bone growth was investigated after six months. The preliminary results demonstrated that the proliferation of osteocytes on the scaffolds in muscle,vas obviously better than in abdominal cavity, and about tell times more blood vessels (BVs) were appeared in the former site than those in the latter site. This study presents an alternative way to reveal the relationship between the porous structure of scaffolds and ectopia bone growth because the interconnection and porosity call be controlled easily by the size and porosity of HA spherules.