Highly Porous Biocomposite Scaffolds Fabricated by Chitosan/Alginate/Diatom for Tissue Engineering

Tissue scaffolds based composite material have attracted great attention in the field of bone tissue engineering. Therefore, researchers are looking for new materials to be used for composite tissue scaffolding. We aimed to produce the effect of high porous and non-toxic scaffolds as hydrogels with two different contents using chitosan, alginate and diatom. Beads were made from alginate and alginate/diatom hydrogels and additionally coated in dilute chitosan solution. Obtained alginate-chitosan (AC) and alginate/diatom-chitosan (ADC) beads were lyophilized. High-porous AC scaffold and both high-porous and nano-porous ADC scaffold were examined in terms of density, porosity, swelling tests and morphologic, chemical, cytotoxic analysis. In this study, high porosity with approximately 450 μm pore size was found for AC and ADC scaffolds. The average pore size of diatom in ADC was acquired as 280 nm. Moreover, AC and ADC did not show any cytotoxic effects on HEK293 cells. Our results clearly indicated that scaffolds have an alternative potential in the field of tissue engineering.