Porous Hydroxyapatite Bioceramic Scaffolds for Drug Delivery and Bone Regeneration

The conventional methods of supplying a patient with pharmacologic active substances suffer from being very poorly selective, so that damage can occurs to the healthy tissues and organs, different from the intended target. In addition, high drug doses can be required to achieve the desired effect. An alternative approach is based on the use of implantable delivery tools, able to release the active substance in a controlled way. In the current research local drug delivery devices containing 8mg of gentamicin sulphate were prepared using custom developed vacuum impregnation technique. In vitro dissolution tests showed that gentamicin release was sustained for 12h. In order to decrease gentamicin release rate, biopolymer coatings were applied and coating structure investigated. The results showed that gentamicin release can be sustained for more than 70h for poly(-caprolactone) coated calcium phosphate scaffolds. From poly lactic acid and polyvinyl alcohol coated scaffolds gentamicin was released within 20h and 50h, respectively.