A novel waterborne polyurethane with biodegradability and high flexibility for 3D printing

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) printing provides a new approach of fabricating implantable products because it permits a flexible manner to extrude complex and customized shapes of the tissue scaffolds. Compared with other printable biomaterials, the polyurethane elastomer has several merits, including excellent mechanical properties and good biocompatibility. However, some intrinsic behavior, especially its high melting point and slow rate of degradation, hampered its application in 3D printed tissue engineering. Herein, we developed a 3D printable amino acid modified biodegradable waterborne polyurethane (WBPU) using a water-based green chemistry process. The flexibility of this material endows better compliance with tissue during implantation and prevents high modulus transplants from scratching surrounding tissues. The histocompatibility experiments show that the WBPU induces no apparent acute rejection or inflammation in vivo. We successfully fabricated a highly flexible WBPU scaffold by deposition 3D printing technology at a low temperature (50°C ~ 70 °C), and the printed products could support the adhesion and proliferation of chondrocytes and fibroblasts. The printed blocks possessed controllable degradability due to the different amounts of hydrophilic chain extender and did not cause accumulation of acidic products. In addition, we demonstrated that our WBPU is highly applicable for implantable tissue engineering because there is no cytotoxicity during its degradation. Taken together, we envision that this printable WBPU can be used as an alternative biomaterial for tissue engineering with low temperature printing, biodegradability, and compatibility.

Design of a Waterborne Polyurethane–Urea Ink for Direct Ink Writing 3D Printing

“…The use of WBPUUs with different compositions as printing inks for DIW 3D printing has been reported in the literature in the last years, mostly focused on biomedical applications [9,11] In a recent work, Feng et al synthesized a biodegradable WBPUU modified with an amino acid, presenting good flexibility and biocompatibility with a potential application in tissue engineering via 3D printing [12]. In another study, Hsieh et al examined the viability of a thermoresponsive WBPUU that formed a gel near 37 • C without any cross-linker.…”

Bioink Formulations for Bone Tissue Regeneration

“…Ideally, the degradation rate of scaffolds matches the production rate of ECM, whilst the degradation products have no side effects on the host (Sabir et al, 2009). For example, the mass loss of a waterborne polyurethane scaffold reached 35.62% after 90 days of degradation, while the fluorescence image showed that after 7 days of incubation, rabbit chondrocytes covered all waterborne polyurethane scaffolds (Feng et al, 2020). (5) Surface characteristics: The interface between the scaffold and the tissue to be repaired is critical to the success of a scaffold transplantation, with numerous reactions and interactions taking place.…”

Preparation and Characterization of Glucose and Sulfamate Double‐Modified Biodegradable Waterborne Polyurethane

“…It has been widely applied in such fields as marine anti-fouling coatings and metal coatings, radioactive materials, drug-delivery systems, biomedical engineering scaffolds, implantable bioelectronics and so on. [10][11][12] Furthermore, biodegradable materials are a type of materials, which are friendly to the environment and have shown good effects on maintaining a controlled-release performance. [13][14][15][16] For example, fertilizers coated with biodegradable materials can improve the nutrient absorption and avoid the nutrient diversion loss during the process of degradation.…”