Osteoconductive and electroactive carbon nanofibers/hydroxyapatite nanocomposite tailored for bone tissue engineering: in vitro and in vivo studies

In this study, we aimed to fabricate osteoconductive electrospun carbon nanofibers (CNFs) decorated with hydroxyapatite (HA) crystal to be used as the bone tissue engineering scaffold in the animal model. CNFs were derived from electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers via heat treatment and the carbonized nanofibers were mineralized by a biomimetic approach. The growth of HA crystals was confirmed using XRD, FTIR, and EDAX analysis techniques. The mineralization process turned the hydrophobic CNFs (WCA: 133.5° ± 0.6°) to hydrophilic CNFs/HA nanocomposite (WCA 15.3° ± 1°). The in vitro assessments revealed that the fabricated 24M-CNFs nanocomposite was biocompatible. The osteoconductive characteristics of CNFs/HA nanocomposite promoted in vivo bone formation in the rat’s femur defect site, significantly, observed by computed tomography (CT) scan images and histological evaluation. Moreover, the histomorphometric analysis showed the highest new bone formation (61.3 ± 4.2%) in the M-CNFs treated group, which was significantly higher than the negative control group (the defect without treatment) (< 0.05). To sum up, the results implied that the fabricated CNFs/HA nanocomposite could be considered as the promising bone healing material.