Comparative study of silk fibroin porous scaffolds derived from salt/water and sucrose/hexafluoroisopropanol in cartilage formation.

The purpose of this study is to create a new silk fibroin scaffold with sufficient three-dimensional morphology and porous structure for cartilage formation. We have applied sucrose particles sized around 300 to 500 microm as porogens compared to equal-sized salt particles. After the porogen was leached out with water, scaffolds were prepared with fibroin derived from sucrose/hexafluoroisopropanol (Su/H) or salt/water (Sa/W) based composites.