PLLA Scaffold via TIPS for Bone Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering offers a promising new approach to repair bone fractures, fractures that do not heal, and fractures due to bone tumors. In this work, two different approaches were tested in order to obtain Poly-L- Lactic Acid (PLLA) porous scaffolds via Thermally Induced Phase Separation (TIPS) for bone tissue engineering application. First, the possibility to produce a composite material, by incorporating Hydroxyapatite (HA) particles in a Poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) matrix was investigated. Two PLLA/HA weight ratios (70/30 and 50/50) were tested. The results showed that the presence of HA does not influence the phase separation process, i.e. the composite scaffolds microstructure is simi…