Preclinical study of SZ2080 material 3D microstructured scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering made by femtosecond direct laser writing lithography

Abstract

Over the last decade DLW employing ultrafast pulsed lasers has become a well-established technique for the creation of custom-made free-form three-dimensional (3D) microscaffolds out of a variety of materials ranging from proteins to biocompatible glasses. Its potential applications for manufacturing a patient’s specific scaffold seem unlimited in terms of spatial resolution and geometry complexity. However, despite few exceptions in which live cells or primitive organisms were encapsulated into a polymer matrix, no demonstration of an in vivo study case of scaffolds generated with the use of such a method was performed. Here, we report a preclinical study of 3D artificial microstructured scaffolds out of hybrid organic-inorganic (HOI) material SZ2080 fabricated using the DLW technique. The created 2.1 × 2.1 × 0.21 mm3 membrane constructs are tested both in vitro by growing isolated allogeneic rabbit chondrocytes (Cho) and in vivo by implanting them into rabbit organisms for one, three and six months. An ex vivo histological examination shows that certain pore geometry and the pre-growing of Cho prior to implantation significantly improves the performance of the created 3D scaffolds. The achieved biocompatibility is comparable to the commercially available collagen membranes. The successful outcome of this study supports the idea that hexagonal-pore-shaped HOI microstructured scaffolds in combination with Cho seeding may be successfully implemented for cartilage tissue engineering.

Synthesis, Characterization and 3D Micro-Structuring via 2-Photon Polymerization of Poly(glycerol sebacate)-Methacrylate–An Elastomeric Degradable Polymer

“…The corresponding beam diameters were 2.09, 0.45 and 0.79 µm, respectively. This approach enables the production of micro-scale scaffolds for potential applications in vivo [25].…”

Nanoscale Precision of 3D Polymerization via Polarization Control

“…The ascribed fi ndings demonstrate that beam polarization can be used practically as the voxel's aspect ratio tuning parameter, and should be taken into account for precise 3D fabrication of nanostructures such as PhCs and microoptical components, yet perhaps can be disregarded for some bulkier objects or larger-scale scaffolding structures of >1 µm single-feature dimensions. [ 52 ] The effects considered are expected to be of even greater importance in mass-transport-based laser-additive nanostructuring techniques, such as the selective deposition of metallic nanoparticles [ 53 ] or the preparation of conductive 3D wires. [ 54 ] Experimental Section SZ2080 organic-inorganic hybrid material was doped with 4,4′-bis(diethylamino)-benzophenone (BIS) photoinitiator at 1% by weight and was used as a photopolymer (IESL-FORTH).…”

Optically Clear and Resilient Free-Form µ-Optics 3D-Printed via Ultrafast Laser Lithography

“…It combines all of the best properties offered by these materials, such as low shrinkage, a hard gel form during fabrication, and transparency for visible light [4], and thus is widely used in creating structures to be employed in various applications in medicine [11], micro-optics [12] and photonics [13]. In the standard 3DLL case, photopolymerization of this material is initiated by nonlinear absorption in the PI molecule [14].…”