“Product-oriented engineering” applied to the development of porous scaffolds for tissue engineering

C. de Biena, T. Ounallyb, V. Collardc, C. Jérômec, A. Léonarda, D. Toyea

aDepartment of Applied Chemistry, Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium bDepartment of Chemical Engineering, Laboratory of Macromolecules, University of Tunis, 210 Tunis, Tunisia cCenter for Education and Research on Macromolecules, University of Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium

Abstract

This work applies a “product-oriented engineering” approach to the development of porous scaffolds for tissue engineering. Polylactic acid scaffolds were obtained by a freeze-drying process. Their 2D/3D microstructure was characterized by X-ray microtomography and related to the operating conditions used. Two types of scaffold end- use properties were characterized in relation to their microstructure: the mechanical and the transport properties. Scaffold young's modulus was computed from data measured on tension-compression devices. To evaluate the permeability, Darcy's experiments were carried out. The obtained results allowed highlighting the quantitative relationships existing between elaboration conditions, microstructure and end-use properties of the fabricated PLA scaffolds.

Keywords: Tissue engineering, Biopolymer porous scaffolds, Polylactic acid, X-ray microcomputed tomography, Microstructure 3D, Young's modulus, Permeability