Porous Silk Fibroin/Cellulose Hydrogels for Bone Tissue Engineering via a Novel Combined Process Based on Sequential Regeneration and Porogen Leaching

Scaffolds used for bone tissue engineering need to have a variety of features to accommodate bone cells. The scaffold should mimic natural bone, it should have appropriate mechanical strength, support cell differentiation to the osteogenic lineage, and offer adequate porosity to allow vascularization and bone in-growth. In this work, we aim at developing a new process to fabricate such materials by creating a porous composite material made of silk fibroin and cellulose as a suitable scaffold of bone tissue engineering. Silk fibroin and cellulose are both dissolved together in N,N-dimethylacetamide/LiCl and molded to a porous structure using NaCl powder. The hydrogels are prepared by a sequential regeneration process: cellulose is solidified by water vapor treatment, while the remaining silk fibroin in the hydrogel is insolubilized by methanol, which leads to a cellulose framework structure embedded in a silk fibroin matrix. Finally, the hydrogels are soaked in water to dissolve the NaCl for making a porous structure. The cellulose composition results in improving the mechanical properties for the hydrogels in comparison to the silk fibroin control material. The pore size and porosity are estimated at around 350 µm and 70%, respectively. The hydrogels support the differentiation of MC3T3 cells to osteoblasts and are expected to be a good scaffold for bone tissue engineering.