Fabrication and tissue engineering application of a 3D PPF/DEF scaffold using Blu-ray based 3D printing system

Abstract

Micro-stereolithography (MSTL) among various 3D printing technologies reaches high resolution by using a focused laser beam, and therefore it can be used to fabricate objects that have feature sizes of tens to hundreds of micrometers. To fabricate a scaffold for the tissue engineering, we used a Blu-ray based MSTL system which is simpler and more compact than the conventional MSTL system. We selected a biodegradable photopolymer, Poly (propylene fumarate)/diethyl fumarate (PPF/DEF), as the construction material, and progressed post-curing to strengthen the fabricated scaffold. We seeded MC3T3-E1 pre-osteoblasts on the fabricated PPF/DEF 3D scaffolds and cultured them in a multi-stimulus bioreactor system which mimics the in-vivo shear flow environment and simultaneously supplies a magnetic field to improve cell proliferation. A cell culture result showed the superiority of combining our bioreactor system with the PPF/DEF 3D scaffold. The combination of 3D scaffold fabricated by Blu-ray based MSTL and a multi-stimulus bioreactor system may be a valuable tool for bone tissue regeneration.