A series of porous chitosan scaffolds were fabricated with various sizes of silica particles as porogen at chitosan/silica weight ratio of 9∶1. The effective pore sizes and bibulous ability of the porous scaffolds were compared with those of non-porous films. It shows that the pore size is determined by the size of silica particles while the bibulous ratio is enhanced with increasing pore sizes. To evaluate their biocompatibility, human fetal lung fibroblasts were cultured on these scaffolds. The results show that all the scaffolds availed to the cell growth. After one day of cell seeding, the porous scaffolds held more viable cells than the non-porous did, while cells spread better on the control film. Five days later, the cell proliferation occurred on all the scaffolds, whereas considerably more cells proliferated on the porous ones, and the bigger the pore size was, the faster cell proliferation was achieved. These results would contribute to the application of chitosan scaffolds in tissue engineering.

Key words: chitosan, human fetal lung fibroblast, porous scaffold, tissue engineering