Comparison of three-dimensional printing and vacuum freeze-dried techniques for fabricating composite scaffolds

Structurally and Functionally Optimized Silk‐Fibroin–Gelatin Scaffold Using 3D Printing to Repair Cartilage Injury In Vitro and In Vivo

“…Therefore, the ideal scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering should be able to recruit and retain an adequate quantity of BMSCs from subchondral bone to fill the defect area by functional modification . Previous studies have shown that a suitable spatial structure of the scaffold is important for BMSC proliferation and differentiation, and the structure of scaffolds can be optimized by 3D printing (3DP) technology, which has already been proven as a better tool than traditional techniques like freeze‐dry . Thus, there is a great need to develop a functionally and structurally optimized scaffold using a 3DP technique for recruiting more autologous BMSCs and providing a suitable microenvironment for cartilage regeneration in the knee joint.…”

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that pore size and the 3D spatial structure of the scaffolds are key factors for cell proliferation, differentiation, and extracellular matrix (ECM) production during hyaline cartilage regeneration . It has been proved that in cartilage repair, cells prefer scaffolds with pore size between 250 and 500 µm for better proliferation, differentiation, and ECM production ability .…”

“…However, when the mass ratio was 2/1, the degradation time was too long for cartilage regeneration, while the compressive modulus had little improvement. After comparing the degradation and mechanical properties, the SF‐gelatin (SFG) scaffolds with a mass ratio of 1:2 (6.9% w/v) were selected, which might match the previously reported requirements of tissue‐engineered cartilage scaffold …”

Novel biomimetic fiber incorporated scaffolds for tissue engineering

“…From a structural perspective, an ideal scaffold should possess interconnected macro pores with sizes from 10 to 100 μm to facilitate cell infiltration and tissue formation, as well as similar topography of natural ECM that would have an impact on cell behavior such as cell adhesion and gene expression (Han et al, 2012;McMurtrey, 2014;Sakai et al, 2008;Sun et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2014). For that purpose, here we developed a fabrication process to incorporate electrospun short fibers within biopolymer scaffold for tissue engineering applications.…”

“…The freeze-drying method is widely used to fabricate 3D porous scaffold for tissue engineering (Zhang et al, 2014). However, most freeze-dried scaffolds are composed of pores that are made from randomly or ordered distributed thin walls that lack the fibrous topography of the natural ECM (Ran et al, 2016;Sun, Li, Jiang, Sun, & Li, 2016). The mechanical properties of freeze-dried scaffold can be tailored by varying the thermal gradient during processing as described previously (Zhang et al, 2014), which would inevitably alter the pore size.…”