Nutrient Release from Printable Tissue Engineering Scaffolds

Within tissue engineering, the scalability of current model scaffolds for the treatment of critical bone defects is a major limitation. The scaffold pore size allows for successful in vitro performance, but when scaled for in vivo testing the overall porosity that allows successful diffusion of nutrients from the periphery to the core is insufficient due to the build-up of cellular effluent. This restricted diffusion causes formation of a ‘necrotic core’ within the scaffold, resulting in cell death.
Through the development of multi-layered hybrid scaffolds, this research addresses this concern by providing adhesion sites and sufficient overall porosity promoting cellular adhesion, proliferation and efficient nutrient exchange. To date this work has focused on the polymerisation of commercially available blends of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylates of low molecular weights, through near-UV wavelengths to exploit the resultant variances of pore sizes, allowing for increased diffusion through the scaffold component layer.