Fabrication of Electrospun 3D Nanofibrous Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrate-Co-4-Hydroxybutyrate)/Graphene Scaffolds for Potential Bone Tissue Engineering: Effects of Graphene on Scaffold Properties and Cellular Behaviors

Bone defects have posed a great challenge for clinical repair since currently available approaches are strongly limited to various deficiencies. Bone tissue engineering has emerged as a desirable strategy to solve this problem with unique benefits. Scaffolds for bone tissue engineering highly call for sufficient mechanical properties and excellent porous microstructure where most polymeric materials perform unsatisfactorily. In this study, new three-dimensional P34HB/graphene nanofibrous scaffolds were successfully fabricated for the first time by electrospinning technology. Effects of incorporation and amount of graphene on scaffold properties, such as morphology, porosity, hydrophilicity and mechanics, were in detail explored and compared. Cellular behaviors of BMSCs, including morphology, adhesion, cell viability and proliferation, were further evaluated on these scaffolds. The new P34HB/graphene scaffolds manifested obvious enhancement of scaffold properties in many aspects and better cell performances. Our study also revealed how scaffold properties changed along with added graphene amount. These results demonstrate that our electrospun 3D nanofibrous P34HB/graphene scaffolds can be more advantageous over the unmodified P34HB rival in future bone tissue engineering purposes.