Rapid mineralization of porous gelatin scaffolds by electrodeposition for bone tissue engineering

In bone tissue engineering, rapid mineralization of polymeric scaffolds is of particular importance in protecting the encapsulated therapeutic drugs or growth factors from loss and degradation. Here, we present a simple and rapid approach to the fabrication of mineralized porous scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. In this approach, three-dimensional (3-D) porous gelatin scaffolds were firstly fabricated by freeze-drying followed by an electrodeposition process for mineralization. We show that a high-quality apatite coating on the gelatin scaffold could be achieved within a couple of hours by electrodeposition. Increasing the deposition voltage or electrolyte temperature favored to the formation of large amounts of apatite coatings with compositions dominated by the hydroxyapatite crystals, whereas the presence of ultrasonic field facilitated the production of homogeneous apatite coatings. Moreover, biological assays indicated that the mineralized scaffolds exhibited better support for the proliferation and osteoblastic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells over a neat gelatin scaffold, especially for the case of mineralized scaffolds by electrodeposition at 60 degrees C. Therefore, the method developed would be highly desired for the rapid mineralization of polymer scaffolds in which biological molecules were loaded for functional bone tissue engineering applications.