Fabrication and Characteristics of Porous Hydroxyapatite-CaO Composite Nanofibers for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Hydroxyapatite (HAp), a major inorganic and essential component of normal bone and teeth, is a promising biomaterial due to its excellent biocompatibility, bioactivity, and osteoconductivity. Therefore, synthetic HAp has been widely used as a bone substitute, cell carrier, and delivery carrier of therapeutic genes or drugs. Mesoporous materials have attracted considerable attention due to their relatively high surface area, large pore volume, high porosity, and tunable pore size. Recently, mesoporous HAp has also been successfully synthesized by the traditional template-based process and has been demonstrated to possess better drug-loading and release efficiencies than traditional HAp. It is widely accepted that cell adhesion and most cellular activities, including spreading, migration, proliferation, gene expression, surface antigen display, and cytoskeletal functioning, are sensitive to the topography and molecular composition of the matrix. The native extracellular matrix is a porous, nanofibrous structure. The major focus of this study is the fabrication of porous hydroxyapatite-CaO composite nanofibers (p-HApFs) and the investigation of its drug-release property. In this study, nanofibers were prepared by the sol-gel route and an electrospinning technique to mimic the three-dimensional structure of the natural extracellular matrix. We analyzed the components of fibers using X-ray diffraction and determined the morphology of fibers using scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The average diameter of the nanofibers was approximately 461 ± 186 nm. The N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms were type IV isotherms. Moreover, p-HApFs had better drug-loading efficiency and could retard the burst release of tetracycline and maintain antibacterial activity for a period of 7 days. Hence, p-HApFs have the potential to become a new bone graft material.