Synthesis and Characterization of Silver-Coated Polymeric Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering: Antibacterial and In Vitro Evaluation of Cytotoxicity and Biocompatibility

Muhammad Umar Aslam Khan; Saiful Izwan Abd Razak; Hassan Mehboob; Mohammed Rafiq Abdul Kadir; T Joseph Sahaya Anand; Fawad Inam; Saqlain A Shah; Mahmoud E F Abdel-Haliem; Rashid Amin

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c05596

Synthesis and Characterization of Silver-Coated Polymeric Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering: Antibacterial and In Vitro Evaluation of Cytotoxicity and Biocompatibility

ACS Omega. 2021 Feb 2;6(6):4335-4346. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c05596. eCollection 2021 Feb 16.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ School of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81300 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
² Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, University of the Punjab, 54590 Lahore, Pakistan.
³ Institute for Personalized Medicine, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200030 Shanghai, China.
⁴ Center for Advanced Composite Materials, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81300 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
⁵ Department of Engineering Management, College of Engineering, Prince Sultan University, P.O. Box No. 66833, Rafha Street, Riyadh 11586, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Sustainable and Responsive Manufacturing Group, Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Technology, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Melaka, Malaysia.
⁷ Department of Engineering and Computing, University of East London, E16 2RD London, U.K.
⁸ Nanotechnology Lab, Department of Physics, Forman Christian College (University), 54600 Lahore, Pakistan.
⁹ Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Zagazig University, 44519 Zagazig, Egypt.
¹⁰ Department of Biology, College of Sciences, University of Hafr Al Batin, 39524 Hafar Al-batin, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

In bone tissue engineering, multifunctional composite materials are very challenging. Bone tissue engineering is an innovative technique to develop biocompatible scaffolds with suitable orthopedic applications with enhanced antibacterial and mechanical properties. This research introduces a polymeric nanocomposite scaffold based on arabinoxylan-co-acrylic acid, nano-hydroxyapatite (nHAp), nano-aluminum oxide (nAl₂O₃), and graphene oxide (GO) by free-radical polymerization for the development of porous scaffolds using the freeze-drying technique. These polymeric nanocomposite scaffolds were coated with silver (Ag) nanoparticles to improve antibacterial activities. Together, nHAp, nAl₂O₃, and GO enhance the multifunctional properties of materials, which regulate their physicochemical and biomechanical properties. Results revealed that the Ag-coated polymeric nanocomposite scaffolds had excellent antibacterial properties and better microstructural properties. Regulated morphological properties and maximal antibacterial inhibition zones were found in the porous scaffolds with the increasing amount of GO. Moreover, the nanosystem and the polymeric matrix have improved the compressive strength (18.89 MPa) and Young's modulus (198.61 MPa) of scaffolds upon increasing the amount of GO. The biological activities of the scaffolds were investigated against the mouse preosteoblast cell lines (MC3T3-E1) and increasing the quantities of GO helps cell adherence and proliferation. Therefore, our findings showed that these silver-coated polymeric nanocomposite scaffolds have the potential for engineering bone tissue.