Selective Laser Sintering of Polycaprolactone Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds
- PDF / 1,449,445 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 64 Downloads / 244 Views
AA9.9.1
Selective Laser Sintering of Polycaprolactone Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds Brock Partee1, Scott J. Hollister1, 2 and Suman Das1 1 Mechanical and 2Biomedical Engineering Departments, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125, U.S.A. ABSTRACT Present tissue engineering practice requires porous, bioresorbable scaffolds to serve as temporary 3D templates to guide cell attachment, differentiation, and proliferation. Recent research suggests that scaffold material and internal architecture significantly influence regenerate tissue structure and function. However, lack of versatile biomaterials processing methods have slowed progress towards fully testing these findings. Our research investigates using selective laser sintering (SLS) to fabricate bone tissue engineering scaffolds. Using SLS, we have fabricated polycaprolactone (PCL) and polycaprolactone/tri-calcium phosphate composite scaffolds. We report on scaffold design and fabrication, mechanical property measurements, and structural characterization via optical microscopy and micro-computed tomography. INTRODUCTION In the US, approximately a quarter of patients in need of organ transplants die while waiting for a suitable donor [1] and over 1.3 million surgical procedures are conducted every year to repair damaged or fractured bone [2]. The economic expense associated with tissue loss is estimated at more than $400 billion per year. Standard treatments include transplantation, surgical reconstruction, and the use of mechanical devices. However, problems resulting from the limited supply of donor organs, risk of rejection, and potential disease transmission have led to the investigation for alternative methods of treatment. Tissue engineering has the potential to resolve these areas of concern. It holds great promise for providing improved patient care and decreased health care costs by reducing the number of surgical procedures and recovery time associated with current medical practices. Tissue engineering focuses on growing tissue from cells as opposed to making repairs using autografts, allografts, and prosthetics [2, 3]. It has been observed that isolated cells are unable to form mechanically and physiologically suitable neotissues if growth is left unassisted [4]. As a result, present tissue engineering practice generally requires the use of porous, bioresorbable scaffolds to serve as temporary, three-dimensional templates to guide cell attachment, differentiation, proliferation, and subsequent regenerate tissue formation. Recent research strongly suggests that the choice of scaffold material and its internal porous architecture significantly affect regenerate tissue type, structure, and function [5-6]. Image-based design techniques, such as those developed by Hollister et al. [7], have introduced the rapid design and analysis of biomimetic and periodic scaffold topologies that aim to simultaneously optimize scaffold architecture, material composition, and mechanical performance. The computational methods employed by these techniques address t
