Mechanical variation and proliferation behavior in hydroxyapatite based scaffolds with mesenchymal stem cells

Calcium phosphate bioceramics such as hydroxyapatite (HA) have widely been applied as scaffolds in bone tissue engineering because of high osteo-conductivity and biocompatibility. In the present study, continuous porous HA scaffold was fabricated using the template method. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) were then seeded into the HA scaffold up to four weeks to observe the proliferation behavior and variation of the compressive mechanical properties. The scaffold with hMSCs was also characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was found that the compressive strength and elastic modulus tend to increase with increasing culture time due to proliferation and attachment of the cells. The HA scaffold was also found to be suitable for hMSC adhesion, spreading and proliferation. Moreover, improvement of cellular adhesion was achieved by introducing RGD (Arg-Gly- Asp) peptide into the HA scaffold. We can conclude that the HA scaffold provides good environmental conditions for hMSCs as an artificial extracellular matrix. It is also important to note that the cellular adhesion can be effectively improved by RGD.