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Hongbo Zhang. 1 Complex and Intelligent Research Centre, School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, P. R. China.
Li Zhou. 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Wenjun Zhang. 1 Complex and Intelligent Research Centre, School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, P. R. China. 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Address correspondence to: Wenjun Zhang, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatchewan S7N 5A9, Canada, E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
Bringing together biologists, chemical engineers, materials scientists, surgeons, and other clinical researchers, tissue engineering lies at the forefront of the next generation of cutting-edge, multidisciplinary biomedical research. Tissue engineering has advanced over the last decade owing to the fast development in device engineering, biomaterials, and biotechnology. Especially, design and manufacturing of scaffolds has been pioneered by the sophisticated manufacturing technologies such as direct printing of scaffolds.1-7
Scaffolds provide a support to cells so that the cells can grow into tissues and then be placed at the site of concern in human body.8 Examples of the site are skin, cartilage, tendon, liver, esophagus, cardiovascular structures, intestine and bone, and artificial tissues and organs including bladder, cornea, bronchial tubes, blood vessels, and heart.9-12
The physical and chemical properties of the scaffolds are subject to changes in the course of cell culture and tissue growth. This means that at one time, a scaffold may satisfy the requirements but as time goes on, it may deviate away from the requirements. The most basic change is naturally its structural change, such as weight (mass), topology, geometry, and so on. This article is concentrated on mass loss as an indicator of degradation.
An important behavior of scaffolds is that it degrades and reshapes at a rate that matches the formation of new tissue.13 The degradation and resorption kinetics of the scaffold certainly depend on physical properties and mass loss of the scaffold and tissue development.14 Figure 1 shows three situations, that is, too slow degradation (Fig. 1A), balanced degradation and resorption (Fig. 1B), and too fast degradation (Fig. 1C).
FIG. 1. Scaffold degradation rate versus tissue regeneration rate. (A) Scaffold...