An innovative method to obtain porous PLLA scaffolds with highly spherical and interconnected pores
✍ Scribed by Cédryck Vaquette; Céline Frochot; Rachid Rahouadj; Xiong Wang
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 453 KB
- Volume
- 86B
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1552-4973
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Scaffolding is an essential issue in tissue engineering and scaffolds should answer certain essential criteria: biocompatibility, high porosity, and important pore interconnectivity to facilitate cell migration and fluid diffusion. In this work, a modified solvent casting‐particulate leaching out method is presented to produce scaffolds with spherical and interconnected pores. Sugar particles (200–300 μm and 300–500 μm) were poured through a horizontal Meker burner flame and collected below the flame. While crossing the high temperature zone, the particles melted and adopted a spherical shape. Spherical particles were compressed in plastic mold. Then, poly‐L‐lactic acid solution was cast in the sugar assembly. After solvent evaporation, the sugar was removed by immersing the structure into distilled water for 3 days. The obtained scaffolds presented highly spherical interconnected pores, with interconnection pathways from 10 to 100 μm. Pore interconnection was obtained without any additional step. Compression tests were carried out to evaluate the scaffold mechanical performances. Moreover, rabbit bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells were found to adhere and to proliferate in vitro in the scaffold over 21 days. This technique produced scaffold with highly spherical and interconnected pores without the use of additional organic solvents to leach out the porogen. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2008