Nguyen Ngoc Mai, Kakarla Akesh Babu, Nukala Satya Guha, Kong Cin, Baji Avinash, Kong Ing
Advanced Polymer and Composite Materials Laboratory, Department of Engineering, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, La Trobe University, Bendigo, VIC 3552, Australia.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih 43500, Selangor, Malaysia.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Oct 3;15(19):3980. doi: 10.3390/polym15193980.
Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in the use of bioceramics for biomedical purposes. Bioceramics, specifically those made of calcium phosphate, are commonly used in dental and orthopaedic applications. In this context, hydroxyapatite (HA) is considered a viable option for hard tissue engineering applications given its compositional similarity to bioapatite. However, owing to their poor mechanobiology and biodegradability, traditional HA-based composites have limited utilisation possibilities in bone, cartilage and dental applications. Therefore, the efficiency of nano HA (nHA) has been explored to address these limitations. nHA has shown excellent remineralising effects on initial enamel lesions and is widely used as an additive for improving existing dental materials. Furthermore, three-dimensional printing (3DP) or fused deposition modelling that can be used for creating dental and hard tissue scaffolds tailored to each patient's specific anatomy has attracted considerable interest. However, the materials used for producing hard tissue with 3DP are still limited. Therefore, the current study aimed to develop a hybrid polymer nanocomposite composed of nHA, nanoclay (NC) and polylactic acid (PLA) that was suitable for 3DP. The nHA polymer nanocomposites were extruded into filaments and their physiochemical properties were evaluated. The results showed that the addition of nHA and NC to the PLA matrix significantly increased the water absorption and contact angle. In addition, the hardness increased from 1.04 to 1.25 times with the incorporation of nHA. In sum, the nHA-NC-reinforced PLA could be used as 3DP filaments to generate bone and dental scaffolds, and further studies are needed on the biocompatibility of this material.
在过去十年中，人们对将生物陶瓷用于生物医学目的的兴趣日益浓厚。生物陶瓷，特别是由磷酸钙制成的生物陶瓷，常用于牙科和骨科应用。在这种背景下，羟基磷灰石（HA）因其成分与生物磷灰石相似，被认为是硬组织工程应用的一个可行选择。然而，由于传统的基于HA的复合材料机械生物学性能和生物降解性较差，其在骨、软骨和牙科应用中的利用可能性有限。因此，人们探索了纳米HA（nHA）的效能以解决这些局限性。nHA已显示出对早期釉质病变具有优异的再矿化作用，并被广泛用作改善现有牙科材料的添加剂。此外，可用于创建适合每个患者特定解剖结构的牙科和硬组织支架的三维打印（3DP）或熔融沉积建模引起了相当大的兴趣。然而，用于通过3DP生产硬组织的材料仍然有限。因此，当前的研究旨在开发一种由nHA、纳米粘土（NC）和聚乳酸（PLA）组成的适合3DP的混合聚合物纳米复合材料。将nHA聚合物纳米复合材料挤出成细丝，并对其物理化学性质进行评估。结果表明，向PLA基体中添加nHA和NC显著增加了吸水率和接触角。此外，随着nHA的加入，硬度提高了1.04至1.25倍。总之，nHA-NC增强的PLA可用作3DP细丝以生成骨和牙科支架，并且需要对这种材料的生物相容性进行进一步研究。
