He Jiankang, Xia Peng, Li Dichen
State key laboratory for manufacturing systems engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, People's Republic of China.
Biofabrication. 2016 Aug 4;8(3):035008. doi: 10.1088/1758-5090/8/3/035008.
The replication of native hierarchical structures into synthetic scaffolds is important to direct cell growth and tissue regeneration. However, most of the existing scaffold strategies lack the capability to simultaneously realize the controlled fabrication of macroscopic geometries as well as microscale architectures with the scale similar to living cells. Here we developed a melt electrohydrodynamic printing platform and verified its feasibility to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) tissue-engineered scaffolds with complex curved geometries and microscale fibrous structures. Melting temperature was studied to stably print poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL) filaments with the size of about 10 μm, which was precisely stacked into 3D straight walls with fine surface quality. By adjusting stage moving speed and directions, 3D PCL scaffolds with curved contours and predefined fiber orientations or spacing were successfully printed. Biological experiments showed that the printed microscale scaffolds had good biocompatibility and facilitated cellular proliferation and alignment in vitro. It is envisioned that the melt electrohydrodynamic printing can potentially provide an innovative tool to fabricate hierarchical scaffolds that mimic the native tissue architectures in a multiscale level.
将天然分层结构复制到合成支架中对于引导细胞生长和组织再生非常重要。然而，现有的大多数支架策略都缺乏同时实现宏观几何形状以及与活细胞相似尺度的微观结构的可控制造能力。在此，我们开发了一种熔体电液动力打印平台，并验证了其制造具有复杂弯曲几何形状和微观纤维结构的三维（3D）组织工程支架的可行性。研究了熔化温度以稳定打印尺寸约为10μm的聚（ε-己内酯）（PCL）细丝，这些细丝被精确堆叠成具有良好表面质量的3D直壁。通过调整平台移动速度和方向，成功打印出具有弯曲轮廓以及预定义纤维取向或间距的3D PCL支架。生物学实验表明，打印出的微观支架具有良好的生物相容性，并在体外促进细胞增殖和排列。可以设想，熔体电液动力打印有可能提供一种创新工具，以制造在多尺度水平上模仿天然组织结构的分层支架。
