Fabrication of porous chitosan scaffolds for soft tissue engineering using dense gas CO2

The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of fabricating porous crosslinked chitosan hydrogels in an aqueous phase using dense gas CO2 as a foaming agent. Highly porous chitosan hydrogels were formed by using glutaraldehyde and genipin as crosslinkers. The method developed here eliminates the formation of a skin layer, and does not require the use of surfactants or other toxic reagents to generate porosity. The chitosan hydrogel scaffolds had an average pore diameter of 30–40 μm. The operating pressure had a negligible effect on the pore characteristics of chitosan hydrogels. Temperature, reaction period, type of biopolymer and crosslinker had a significant impact on the pore size and characteristics of the hydrogel produced by dense gas CO2. Scanning electron microscopy and histological analysis confirmed that the resulting porous structures allowed fibroblasts seeded on these scaffolds to proliferate into the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of these chitosan hydrogels. Live/dead staining and MTS analysis demonstrated that fibroblast cells proliferated over 7 days. The fabricated hydrogels exhibited comparable mechanical strength and swelling ratio and are potentially useful for soft tissue engineering applications such as skin and cartilage regeneration.