ORIGINAL RESEARCH REPORT Polycaprolactone fibrous electrospun scaffolds reinforced with copper doped wollastonite for bone tissue engineering applications Mohamed Abudhahir 1 | Azeena Saleem 1 | Pragyan Paramita 1 | Sukumar Dinesh Kumar 2 | Chung Tze-Wen 3 | Nagarajan Selvamurugan 4 | Ambigapathi Moorthi 1 1 Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kelambakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India 2 Department of Biomedical Science, Peptide Biochemistry, Chosun University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan 4 Tissue Engineering and Cancer Research Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, SRM University, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India Correspondence Ambigapathi Moorthi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Bionanotechnology, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kelambakkam, Chennai 603103, India. Email: moorthiibms@gmail.com and moorthia@ chettinadhealthcity.com Abstract The bone defects healing are always associated with post implantation infections; hence biomaterials rules significant role for orchestration of defective bone. In this study, we synthesized biocomposite scaffold by combining polycaprolactone (PCL), wollastonite (Ws) and metal ions (Cu) by electrospinning technique. The man- ufactured scaffolds (PCL/Ws andPCL/Cu–Ws) were subjected to physio-chemical characterization by scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectros- copy, Fourier Transform Infra Red Spectroscopy (FTIR) and XRD. The surface topog- raphy of the scaffolds was found to be micro-fibrous in nature and each fiber was cylindrical in structure. The exogenous biomineralization and protein adsorption capacity of these scaffolds were studied. Enhanced amount of protein was adsorbed on PCL/Cu-Ws than PCL/Ws scaffold after incubating for 48 hr in foetal bovine serum (FBS) also the biomineralization shown to be promoted the apatite formation in vitro. The synthesized PCL/Cu–Ws scaffold was biocompatible to mouse mesen- chymal stem cells and enhanced the mRNA expressionof osteoblastic specific marker genes including alkaline phosphatase and type I collagen and major transcription fac- tor Runx2 in the presence of osteogenic medium indicates the osteoconductive nature of the scaffolds. The amount of calcium deposition and promotion of osteo- blast differentiation and mineralization on human osteoblast cells was confirmed by alizarin red staining. The fabricated scaffolds possess potent antibacterial effect against Staphylococcu aureus and Escherichia coli. Hence, our outcomes confirmed that the PCL/Ws and PCL/Cu–Ws scaffolds promote bonesynthesis by cell prolifera- tion and differentiation suitable for applications in bone regeneration orbone defects. KEYWORDS biocomposite scaffolds, bone regeneration, polycaprolactone, wollastonite 1 | INTRODUCTION Bone tissue engineering applies principle of biology and engineering toward development of viable substitutes for renovation and Mohamed Abudhahir and Azeena Saleem contributed equally to this study. Received: 15 April 2020 Revised: 20 August 2020 Accepted: 2 September 2020 DOI: 10.1002/jbm.b.34729 J Biomed Mater Res. 2020;1–11. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jbmb © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC 1