The correlation between the internal structure and vascularization of controllable porous bioceramic materials in vivo: a quantitative study.

It is noticeable that porous architectural characteristics of the biomaterials play an important role in revascularization of the scaffold. However, there has been no consensus regarding the optimal conditions for vascularization, including macropore size, shape, interconnection, and the arrangement of macropores, due to the failure to accurately control porous structure of biomaterials. To investigate the effect of the porous structure parameters on vascularization of the biomaterials, an accurate control of these parameters is required. In this study, porous β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) with accurately controlled pore parameters is fabricated by using assembled organic microspheres as templates combined with casting technique. Using this technique, we produced a series of disk-type β-TCP with variable pore sizes and variable interconnections to evaluate the influence of macropore size and interconnection on the vascularization of bioceramic material in vivo. The vascularization of β-TCP implanted in the rabbit model is evaluated by histomorphology and single photon emission computed tomography. The results showed that the pore parameters affect not only the size of the blood vessels growing into the porous structure but also the number of blood vessels formed in the pores of the bioceramic. The increase in pore size only resulted in an increase in size of the blood vessels growing into the macroporous of the bioceramic scaffolds. However, with the increase in size of interconnection, both the size and number of the blood vessels formed in the macroporous increased. Therefore, we conclude that the size of the interconnections is more important for vascularization in the scaffold compared with the pore size. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in vascularization in the scaffolds with pores size above 400 μm, and there was no marked increase in extent of vascularization with further increase in pore size above 400 μm, indicating that the upper limit of pore size for vascularization is 400 μm.