Calcium Alginate Bead Based Scaffold For Drug Delivery And Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Implants are medical devices that are fabricated in order to substitute, support or improve the biological structures. Generally, such implants are composed of biocompatible materials (synthetic polymers and natural biopolymers, metals, metal alloys) depending upon their applications. In this regard, we fabricated a novel three dimensional calcium alginate bead based scaffold implant for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. The scaffold was designed by placing the alginate beads in layer by layer arrangement allowing hexagonal closed packing. The designed scaffold was analyzed for its physico-chemical characteristics using SEM, FTIR, swelling behavior and drug release kinetics. Further, biological characterizations such as biocompatibility and antibacterial activity of the scaffolds were also carried out. The fabricated scaffold had dense and compact packing of the calcium alginate beads resulting in better mechanical strength. Analysis of release kinetics of model drug (Rhodamine) showed that the release rate of the drug was dependent on the number of layers stacked over each other. The scaffold implant was found to be biocompatible. Thus, we decipher that the scaffold implant could be used for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications.