Preparation, characterization and cytocompatibility of porous ACP/PLLA composites

The purpose of this work was to incorporate amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) into porous poly( L ‐lactic acid) (PLLA), because ACP is capable of fast phase transformation and morphological change in body fluid, such, a desired pore wall surface within bone tissue engineering scaffolds can be created. A highly porous ACP/PLLA composite was prepared by a thermally induced phase separation technique. The results showed that the composite had an interconnected pore structure with 100 μm macropores and 10 μm micropores, and 91% porosity; 40 nm primary particles of ACP were agglomerated to 3 μm aggregates, and the aggregates were homogeneously distributed in pore walls; These aggregates showed to be in situ transformed into bone‐like apatite after 1 h soaking in phosphate buffered saline solution. Human osteoblast‐like cell culture showed that the ACP/PLLA composite had better cell adhesion and alkaline phosphotase activity than pure PLLA. This study demonstrates that the ACP/PLLA composite can enhance cytocompatibility and could act as a promising scaffold for bone tissue engineering. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res, 2006