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We produced highly porous gelatin-siloxane (GLA-S) hybrid scaffolds with biomimetic anisotropic porous structure, physiochemical properties, mechanical behaviors and biological functions by treating gelatin-siloxane hybrid gels in an ammonium hydroxide solution. The siloxane used as an inorganic phase could effectively crosslink the gelatin polymer, which allowed for the unidirectional enlargement of ammonia vacuoles during ammonium hydroxide treatment. This created aligned pores in an axial direction when the siloxane contents (10 and 20 wt %) were high. In addition, the gelatin polymer could be uniformly hybridized with the siloxane phase at the molecular level, while intense interaction between these two phases could be achieved. This resulted in a significant increase in mechanical properties. The GLA-S hybrid scaffold with a siloxane content of 10 wt % showed reasonably high compressive yield strength of 4.2 ± 0.1 MPa and compressive modulus of 84 ± 5 MPa at a porosity of 86 vol %, which would be comparable to those of natural cancellous bone. In addition, the GLA-S hybrid scaffold had good biocompatibility assessed by in vitro cell tests using pre-osteoblast MC3T3-E1 cells.

This study examined the utility of sol–gel-derived bioactive glass microspheres (BGMs) as a reinforcement to improve the mechanical properties and biological performance of poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) polymer. All of the PCL-BGMs composites produced, with a variety of BGMs contents (10, 20, and 30 wt %), showed a uniform distribution of the BGMs in the PCL matrix, particularly owing to their spherical shape and small size. This led to a considerable increase in the elastic modulus from 93 ± 12 MPa to 635 ± 179 MPa with increasing BGMs content from 0 to 30 wt %. Furthermore, the addition of the BGMs to the PCL polymer significantly increased the hydrophilicity of the PCL-BGMs composites, which led to a higher water absorption and degradation rate. The PCL-BGMs composite with a BGMs content of 30 wt % showed vigorous growth of apatite crystals with a high aspect ratio on its surface after soaking in the simulated body fluid for 7 days, resulting in the creation of a porous carbonate hydroxyapatite layer. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2012.