Designing of PLA scaffolds for bone tissue replacement fabricated by ordinary commercial 3D printer

Abstract

BackgroundThe primary objective of Tissue engineering is a regeneration or replacement of tissues or organs damaged by disease, injury, or congenital anomalies. At present, Tissue engineering repairs damaged tissues and organs with artificial supporting structures called scaffolds. These are used for attachment and subsequent growth of appropriate cells. During the cell growth gradual biodegradation of the scaffold occurs and the final product is a new tissue with the desired shape and properties.In recent years, research workplaces are focused on developing scaffold by bio-fabrication techniques to achieve fast, precise and cheap automatic manufacturing of these structures. Most promising techniques seem to be Rapid prototyping due to its high level of precision and controlling. However, this technique is still to solve various issues before it is easily used for scaffold fabrication.In this article we tested printing of clinically applicable scaffolds with use of commercially available devices and materials. Research presented in this article is in general focused on “scaffolding” on a field of bone tissue replacement.ResultsCommercially available 3D printer and Polylactic acid were used to create originally designed and possibly suitable scaffold structures for bone tissue engineering. We tested printing of scaffolds with different geometrical structures. Based on the osteosarcoma cells proliferation experiment and mechanical testing of designed scaffold samples, it will be stated that it is likely not necessary to keep the recommended porosity of the scaffold for bone tissue replacement at about 90%, and it will also be clarified why this fact eliminates mechanical properties issue. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the size of an individual pore could be double the size of the recommended range between 0.2–0.35 mm without affecting the cell proliferation.ConclusionRapid prototyping technique based on Fused deposition modelling was used for the fabrication of designed scaffold structures. All the experiments were performed in order to show how to possibly solve certain limitations and issues that are currently reported by research workplaces on the field of scaffold bio-fabrication. These results should provide new valuable knowledge for further research.

Comparison between calcium carbonate and β‐tricalcium phosphate as additives of 3D printed scaffolds with polylactic acid matrix

“…FDM has been used for the manufacture of scaffolds with synthetic biomaterials such as polycaprolactone (PCL; Zein, Hutmacher, Tan, & Teoh, 2002), even reaching the commercial introduction of the technique. Another of the most used biomaterials in FDM is polylactic acid (PLA; Esposito Corcione et al, 2017;Gregor et al, 2017;Patrício et al, 2014), being this, like PCL, a biocompatible and biodegradable thermoplastic polymer with low melting temperature (Esposito Corcione et al, 2017). PLA has a lower level of hydrophobicity compared with PCL, which makes it more easily reabsorbable by the organism (Sabino et al, 2013).…”

The effect of larger than cell diameter polylactic acid surface patterns on osteogenic differentiation of rat dental pulp stem cells

“…Diverse environmental conditions, scaffold chemical composition and topography have a significant influence to cell proliferation processes. Moreover, most of the literature analyses the effect of micro‐ and nano‐structures, while there is just a little of information about macro‐structured scaffold impact on cell growth. For this reason we evaluated the proliferation of DPSC grown on both tested PLA macro‐structured surfaces.…”

“…Therefore, larger (macro‐) surface pattern characteristics would accelerate the production speed of the scaffolds and reduce their manufacturing price. However, little is known about larger than cell diameter surface topography (macro‐structured) patterns impact on stem cells fate.…”

“…One of the easiest ways to produce macro‐structured scaffolds is 3D printing. The use of 3D printers allows for highly reproducible and uniform open‐pore size production and potential orthogonal geometry fabrication which can be tailored to mimic the tissue extracellular matrix (ECM) architecture of choice. 3D printed polymeric scaffolds are very attractive due to a rapid and standardized manufacturing procedure, as well as their chemical versatility and niche imitating properties that can be easily modified to meet the requirements for the specific type of tissue.…”

Living cell-only bioink and photocurable supporting medium for printing and generation of engineered tissues with complex geometries

“…Digital imaging data, obtained from computed tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging, provide instruction for the desired geometry of printed constructs 7,8 . Biodegradable thermoplastics, such as polycaprolactone, polylactic acid, and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid), are advantageous for printing as stable constructs with delicate structural control can be formed due to the mechanical integrity of original materials [9][10][11] . However, a major drawback is that cells cannot be printed simultaneously due to the use of organic solvents or high temperature to extrude the polymer inks 12 .…”