ABSTRACT
One of the most widely studied tissue engineering strategies for the creation of hard-tissue (such as bone and cartilage) substitutes relies on the use of a temporary 3-D scaffold material within which cells are seeded and cultured
in vitro
prior to implantation. In this type of strategy, the formation of new tissue is deeply influenced by the three-dimensional
environment provided by the scaffolds, namely its composition, porous architecture, and, of course, its biological response to implanted cells and surrounding tissues. In order to meet all the necessary requirements, scaffold materials must be fabricated from polymers with adequate properties. However, the establishment of basic requisites for scaffolds associated to its design constraints is not an easy task and requires a deep knowledge of all the material features that can interfere with cells/tissues-scaffold interactions. Many of these features are dictated by the processing methodology used to fabricate the scaffolds. The development of matrices to serve as templates for cell attachment/suspension and delivery has progressed at a tremendous rate in recent years, and a wide range of methodologies has been developed. Among these processing techniques are methods such as solvent casting and particulate leaching,
membrane lamination,
fiber bonding,
phase
separation/inversion,
melt-based technologies,
microparticle aggregation,
and microwave baking and expansion,
just to cite some examples. More recently, highly reproducible 3-D scaffolds have been obtained using rapid prototyping technologies such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) and 3-D printing.
