Research Article Development and Characterization of Novel Porous 3D Alginate-Cockle Shell Powder Nanobiocomposite Bone Scaffold B. Hemabarathy Bharatham,1,2 Md. Zuki Abu Bakar,2,3 Enoch Kumar Perimal,4

Copyright © 2014 B. Hemabarathy Bharatham et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A novel porous three-dimensional bone scaffold was developed using a natural polymer (alginate/Alg) in combination with a naturally obtained biomineral (nano cockle shell powder/nCP) through lyophilization techniques. The scaffold was developed in varying composition mixture of Alg-nCP and characterized using various evaluation techniques as well as preliminary in vitro studies on MG63 human osteoblast cells. Morphological observations using SEM revealed variations in structures with the use of different Alg-nCP composition ratios. All the developed scaffolds showed a porous structure with pore sizes ideal for facilitating new bone growth; however, not all combination mixtures showed subsequent favorable characteristics to be used for biologica