Nowadays, bone defects could be restored tissue engineering strategy. It needs some factors orchestrating scaffold, cells, biochemical and growth factors. One of the challenging strategies is to engineer ideal scaffold having high biocompatibility, mechanical properties that match those of natural bone, and a similar porous structure. Chitosan, linear polysaccharide composed of randomly distributed β-linked D-glucosamine and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, has been extensively studied scaffold as biomaterial. Thus, this study engineered chitosan-based composites to mimic bone extracellular matrix by conjugating with collagen (COL) and hydroxyapatite (HAP). Particularly, our study isolated chitosan from shrimp shell and fabricated into scaffold based on our previous studies.

Chitosan was successfully extracted after the deacetylation process of chitin. The scaffold exhibited an ideal scaffold for bone tissue engineering purpose due to its porous microstructure which is considered ideal for bone regeneration. However, the compression strength was lower than the compressive strength of cortical bone. Subsequently, the degradation ratio and swelling ratio of the scaffold was ideal for tissue engineering purposes and supported osteoblast like cells.