Design and fabrication of ligament-bone scaffolds with biomimetic interface

A new strategy was proposed to design and fabricate ligament-bone scaffolds with biomimetic interfaces, which aims to solve the problem of stress concentration and fatigue fracture associated with the mechanical fixations between soft ligament scaffolds with hard host bones in current ligament surgery. The structural organization of native ligament-bone interface was investigated to provide the reference for the biomimetic design of ligament-bone interface. A layered fabrication schedule was developed to generate the predefined interface between ligament and bone scaffolds. The material, mechanical and structural properties of the resultant interface were evaluated and analyzed. The results show that the presented method can successfully fabricate ligament-bone composite scaffolds with biomimetic interface and the material composition, mechanical properties and porous microstructures in the interface exhibit layered variations in different phase. It is expected that physiological healing and reliable fixation between ligament scaffolds and host bones can be achieved when the bone scaffolds are fused with the host bones and the multiple tissues are formed in the interface region.