Industrial‐scale fabrication of an osteogenic and antibacterial PLA/silver‐loaded calcium phosphate composite with significantly reduced cytotoxicity

In this study, we report an industrial‐scale fabrication method of a multifunctional polymer composite as a scaffold material for bone tissue engineering. This study successfully demonstrated the potential of applying industrial polymer processing technologies to produce specially functionalized tissue engineering scaffolds. With the inclusion of a newly synthesized multifunctional additive, silver‐doped‐calcium phosphate (silver‐CaP), the composite material exhibited excellent osteogenic inducibility of human adipose‐derived stem cells (hASC) and satisfactory antibacterial efficacy against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus . Also, relative to previously reported methods of direct loading silver particles into polymeric materials, our composite exhibited significantly reduced silver associated cytotoxicity. The enhanced biocompatibility could be a significant advantage for materials to be used for regenerative medicine applications where clinical safety is a major consideration. The impact of different silver loading methodologies on hASC’ osteogenic differentiation was also studied. Overall, the results of this study indicate a promising alternative approach to produce multifunctional scaffolds at industrial‐scale with higher throughput, lower cost, and enhanced reproducibility. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 107B: 900–910, 2019.