Precision Extrusion Deposition of Polycaprolactone/Hydroxyapatite Tissue Scaffolds

Freeform fabrication provides an effective process tool to manufacture advanced tissue scaffolds with specific designed properties. Our research focuses on using a novel Precision Extrusion Deposition (PED) process technique to directly fabricate Polycaprolactone (PCL) and composite PCL/ Hydroxyapatite (HA) tissue scaffolds. The scaffold morphology and the mechanical properties were evaluated using SEM and mechanical testing. In vitro biological studies were conducted to investigate the cellular responses of the composite scaffolds. Results and characterizations demonstrate the viability of the PED process as well as the good mechanical property, structural integrity, controlled pore size, pore interconnectivity, and the biological compatibility of the fabricated scaffolds.Mechanical Engineerin

Precision Extruding Deposition and Characterization of Cellular Poly-e-Caprolactone Tissue Scaffolds

Successes in scaffold guided tissue engineering require scaffolds to have specific macroscopic geometries and internal architectures in order to provide the needed biological and biophysical functions. Freeform fabrication provides an effective process tool to manufacture many advanced scaffolds with designed properties. This paper reports our recent study on using a novel Precision Extruding Deposition (PED) process technique to directly fabricate cellular Poly-ε-Caprolactone (PCL) scaffolds. Scaffolds with a controlled pore size of 250 µm and designed structural orientations were fabricated. The scaffold morphology, internal micro-architecture and mechanical properties were evaluated using SEM, Micro-Computed Tomography (µ-CT) and the mechanical testing. Preliminary biological study was also conducted to investigate the cell responses to the as-fabricated tissue scaffolds. The results and the characterizations demonstrate the viability of the PED process to the scaffold fabrication as well as a good mechanical property, structural integrity, controlled pore size, pore interconnectivity, and the anticipated biological compatibility of the as-fabricated PCL scaffolds.The authors acknowledge the NSF-0219176 project funding support to graduate students Andrew Darling and Saif Khalil, and the ONR research funding support to graduate student Lauren Shor.Mechanical Engineerin

Numerical model for predicting mechanical properties of cell encapsulated hydrogel scaffolds

Paper presented at the 2006 IEEE 32nd Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference, Easton, PA.Precision Extruding Deposition (PED) process was used to directly fabricate Polycaprolactone (PCL) and PCL/ Hydroxyapatite (HA) composite tissue scaffolds. HA powder was melt blended with PCL, a biodegradable polymer. Scaffolds with controlled pore size porosity were fabricated. The scaffold morphology and the mechanical properties were evaluated using SEM and mechanical testing. In vivo biological studies were conducted to investigate the cellular responses of the PCL scaffolds. Results and characterizations demonstrate the viability of the PED process as well as the good mechanical property, structural integrity, controlled pore size, pore interconnectivity, and the biological compatibility of the fabricated scaffolds