The production of engineered porous three-dimensional scaffolds is a field of extensive research for regenerative medicine especially in bone tissue engineering to repair critical bone defects. The use of bioactive glasses (BG) as scaffold material has been considered particularly promising due to their reactivity with the surrounding environment, which allows having a strong bonding to bone and inducing the formation of new tissue led by the biological activity of the released ions during the dissolution process [1]. Nevertheless, BG scaffolds are brittle constructs with poor resistance to crack propagation which is a challenge for load-bearing applications where the scaffolds are under mechanical loads not only in the tissue regeneration process but also during implantation. Therefore, polymer coatings have been considered an interesting approach to overcome the lack of mechanical properties of BG scaffolds, while providing additional functionalities, for example, as therapeutic drug carriers [2].

Natural polymers and proteins such as gelatine, collagen, soy and zein have been considered as coating materials for BG-based scaffolds produced via the foam replica technique [3-6]. Moreover, combining traditional herbal medicine or phytotherapeutics with biomaterials is gaining attention to obtain multifunctional 3D scaffolds. For instance, to tackle bacterial infections in the implantation site. Recently, the antibacterial properties of Manuka Honey (MH) in combination with BG based scaffolds were investigated [6]. In this study, we evaluated the incorporation of MH in a coating made of zein, a natural protein derived from corn with great potential for applications in tissue engineering due to its properties in terms of biocompatibility and degradability. Figure 1 shows the surface of BG scaffolds before coating and after coating with zein and MH. MH was visible as dark regions on the surface. The release of the honey was measured by means of UV-vis spectroscopy and the antibacterial activity against the gram-positive bacteria S. Aureus was evaluated. Regarding the mechanical properties, the coated scaffolds exhibited superior compressive strength than the non-coated BG scaffolds.