A RANGE OF PROCESSING METHODOLOGIES FOR DESIGNING ADEQUATE TISSUE ENGINEERING SCAFFOLDS BASED ON NATURAL ORIGIN DEGRADABLE POLYMERS

摘要

An ideal tissue engineering scaffold must be designed from a polymer with an appropriate degradation rate, and the processing technique must allow the preparation of 3-D scaffolds with controlled porosity and adequate pore sizes, as well as tissue matching mechanical properties. This communication revises recent work that has been developed in our laboratories with the aim of producing porous polymeric structures (from starch based blends) with adequate properties to be used as scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications. The developed methods include a range of melt processing technologies (based on injection molding and extrusion using blowing agents and in some cases surfactants) and other innovative combined techniques, such as, solvent casting-particulate leaching and compression molding + particulate leaching. The samples produced by the different methods were characterized with respect to the morphology of the porous structures and their mechanical and degradation behavior.