Three-dimensional Printing of Composite Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

Background: Today, the need for the bone substitutes trans-plantation in patients how suffer from critical-size bone defect is a significant concern. Tissue engineering is a complex mul-tidisciplinary strategy which offers a promising approach for fabrication of tissue and organ replacements. Among various techniques for fabrication of tissue-engineered scaffolds, three-dimensional (3D) printing is well suited to produce tissue-like constructs especially for bone regenerative therapies. As a case study, we designed and fabricated a composite bone scaffold by a fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer and subsequently investigated physico-chemical properties of 3D printed con-structs for the purpose of using as bone replacement.Materials and Methods: 3D poly-lactic acid (PLA) scaffolds were made by a FDM printer in a resolution of 200μm and then coated with biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP) nano-powder and collagen protein. Physico-chemical characterizations con-sisting scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging, mechani-cal compression test, X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and at-tenuated total reflection (ATR) spectroscopy were performed to investigate the potential use of designed scaffolds for bone tissue engineering.Results: SEM images showed printed scaffolds possess a po-rous structure with suitable inter-connectivity for bone regen-erative therapies. Young’s modulus of scaffolds was around 97 MPa, respectively. ATR and XRD maps also represented pres-ence of BCP and collagen on the surface of PLA network, con-firming successful dip coating process after printing.Conclusion: FDM 3D printers offers a promising approach for fabrication of tissue-like scaffolds especially for bone regenera-tive therapies. In the present study, combination of a polymeric scaffold (i.e. PLA) with a bio-ceramic (i.e. BCP) and an ex-tracellular matrix protein (i.e. collagen) successfully performed and led to the formation of a scaffold with appropriate physico-chemical and mechanical properties for bone tissue engineer-ing. Further investigations are recommended for biological as-sessment of 3D composite scaffolds, in vitro and in vivo.

کلیدواژه ها:

Tissue Engineering ، Bone ، Scaffolds ، 3D printing ، FDM