Study of structured porogen method for bone scaffold fabrication

The increasing demand on bone scaffolds has promoted the development of tissue engineering fabrication technique for manufacturing bone scaffold. In this study, a novel structured porogen method for bone scaffold fabrication has been explored. This method has demonstrated highly efficient and reproducible fabrication of structured bone scaffolds which mimics the bone structure. By using commercially available Drop on Demand (DDP) system and three dimensional printer (3-DP) system, at first designed structured porogens can be manufactured, and then bone scaffolds can be fabricated by injecting the biocomposite materials into the porogens. The mechanical properties of the fabricated scaffolds using DDP system have been characterized. The biocompatibility of our fabricated scaffolds using 3-DP has been examined. With incorporating of bioactive calcium phosphate into the composite materials, the mechanical strength and bioactivity of the scaffolds made by the structured porogen method can be improved significantly. This structured porogen method has a potential to be used on various Solid Freeform Fabrication systems which allows each system to use a single ubiquitous building material to fabricate multiple biomaterial scaffolds with sufficient mechanical integrity.