Abstract
Articular cartilage, which is a white transparent tissue with 1–2 mm thickness, is located in the interface between the two hard bones. The main functions of articular cartilage are stress transmission, absorption, and friction reduction. The cartilage cannot be repaired and regenerated once it has been damaged, and it needs to be replaced by artificial joints. Many approaches, such as artificial joint replacement, hyaluronic acid injection, microfracture surgery and cartilage tissue engineering have been applied in clinical treatment. Basically, some of these approaches are foreign material implantation for joint replacement to reach the goal of pain reduction and mechanism support. This study demonstrated another frontier in the research of cartilage reconstruction by applying regeneration medicine additive manufacturing (3D Printing) and stem cell technology. Light curing materials have been modified and tested to be printable and cytocompatible for stem cells in this research. Design of experiments (DOE) is adapted in this investigation to search for the optimal manufacturing parameter for biocompatible scaffold fabrication and stem cell attachment and growth. Based on the results, an optimal working process of biocompatible and printable scaffolds for cartilage regeneration is reported. We expect this study will facilitate the development of cartilage tissue engineering.
Highlights
Articular cartilage disease is an important issue that seriously influences the quality of life of millions of people every year
Even though we have developed cytocompatible water-based light-cured polyurethane related materials and made it possible to manufacture cartilage scaffolds by digital light processing (DLP)’s 3D printing technology in our previous research [34], we did not discuss the interactions related to the material ratio, the machine parameters of the DLP technology and the design of the scaffolds
Design of experiments (DOE) was used in this study to optimize the material formulation, scaffold design and process parameters, and 25−2 partial factorial experimental design was selected to achieve the maximum benefit with the least resources
Summary
Articular cartilage disease is an important issue that seriously influences the quality of life of millions of people every year. Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of degenerative joint disease, and the quality of life of people with OA is severely affected [1]. It affects more than 40 million people every year [2], and 70% of the population over 65 years of age suffers from it [3]. Cartilage does not have blood vessels and has low metabolic activity. This avascular structure means the lack of nutrients and precursor cells, severely limiting their ability to self-regenerate [4]
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