Abstract
The aim of this work was to fabricate microporous poly(trimethylene carbonate) (PTMC) vascular structures by stereolithography (SLA) for applications in tissue engineering and organ models. Leachable CaCO3 particles with an average size of 0.56 μm were used as porogens. Composites of photocrosslinkable PTMC and CaCO3 particles were cast on glass plates, crosslinked by ultraviolet light treatment and leached in watery HCl solutions. In order to obtain interconnected pore structures, the PTMC/CaCO3 composites had to contain at least 30 vol % CaCO3. Leached PTMC films had porosities ranging from 33% to 71% and a pore size of around 0.5 μm. The mechanical properties of the microporous PTMC films matched with those of natural blood vessels. Resins based on PTMC/CaCO3 composites with 45 vol % CaCO3 particles were formulated and successfully used to build vascular structures of various shapes and sizes by SLA. The intrinsic permeabilities of the microporous PTMC films and vascular structures were at least one order of magnitude higher than reported for the extracellular matrix, indicating no mass transfer limitations in the case of cell seeding.
Highlights
Fabrication of artificial vascular structures is needed for traditional tissue engineering applications, but for disease models on chip as well [1,2,3,4,5]
Large tissue engineering is regarded as a viable strategy for the regeneration of organs, which may provide a solution for the limited availability of donor organs for transplantation [6,7,8]
The walls of an artificial vascular network need to be microporous for the delivery of nutrients to cells and removal of waste products
Summary
Fabrication of artificial vascular structures is needed for traditional tissue engineering applications, but for disease models on chip as well [1,2,3,4,5]. Tissue engineering scaffolds as well as chip-based organ models have been developed both containing vascular structures, using 3D printing of sacrificial templates and 3D bioprinting [12,13,14,15,16,17]. For many applications pores sizes in this range or somewhat larger are suitable for cell seeding, the presence of (sub)micron-sized pores in the scaffold struts is advantageous in view of prolonged nutritional supply throughout the scaffold after implantation. Current commercial SLA machines, are not able to build pores in the (sub)micron range
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