[leave for Adam - copyright supporting evidence]Designing patient-specific melt-electrospun scaffolds for bone regeneration

Abstract

Biofabrication, or the 3D printing of biological-relevant tissues, is revolutionising our ability to treat patients who have suffered tissue loss as a result of trauma, disease or birth defect. As a subset of the Tissue Engineering field, biofabrication research is focussing on optimising the fabrication of implantable constructs, known as scaffolds, which provide a support structure for cell infiltration and growth, ultimately dissolving and restoring tissue, completely healing the patient.While research has focused on developing the mechanical capability to print structures using 3D printing, alongside biological advances to create highly biocompatible, bioactive constructs which have enhanced regenerative properties, less research has focused on developing methods of designing scaffolds which are anatomically matched to individual patients.In this thesis, a novel method for designing patient-specific scaffold for bone regeneration, to be fabricating using the melt-electrospinning 3D printing technique, was developed. The method was then applied to three clinically-relevant case studies, examining how to accurately design scaffolds to treat a wide range of orthopaedic injuries. Medical scan data was obtained from two patients and a third defect was recreated from an anatomical skull model. Following data acquisition, scaffolds were designed using 3D modelling software and processed into slices. These slices were processed by a proprietary g-code generation program which automatically generates the required computer instructions to fabricate each of the suitable layers using a meltelectrospinning machine. A skull scaffold to treat a large cranial defect, a femur scaffold to fill a void after a realignment procedure and a patella scaffold to improve the external shape of the reconstructed bone were successfully designed. The computer instructions were then trialled on the melt-electrospinning machine to assess the success of the generated g-code.In collaboration with the Biofabrication and Tissue Morphology group at the Queensland University of Technology, as well as the Orthopaedic Unit at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, this research project has successfully demonstrated the ability to fabricate patient-specific scaffolds, which one day could be used clinically to treat patients suffering from bone loss.