A room-temperature injection molding/particulate leaching approach for fabrication of biodegradable three dimensional porous scaffolds
writer：Wu LB, Jing DY, Ding JD*
keywords：Porousscaffold，Fabricationmethod，Injectionmolding，Poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide)(PLGA)，Biodegradablepolymer，Tubularscaffold
source：期刊
specific source：Biomaterials, 27 (2): 185-191 2006.1
Issue time：2006年
A “room-temperature” injection molding approach combined with particulate leaching (RTIM/PL) has been, for the first time, developed in this work to fabricate three-dimensional porous scaffolds composed of biodegradable polyesters for tissue engineering. In this approach, a ‘‘wet’’ composite of particulate/ polymer/solvent was used in processing, and thus the injection was not performed at melting state. Appropriate viscosity and flowability were facilely obtained at a certain solvent content so that the composite was able to be injected into a mould under low pressure at room temperature, which was very beneficial for avoiding thermal degradation of polyesters. As a demonstration, tubular and ear-shaped porous scaffolds were fabricated from biodegradable poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) by this technology. Porosities of the resulting scaffolds were as high as 4%. The pores were well interconnected. Besides the well-known characteristics of injection molding to be suitable for automatization of a fabrication process with high repeatability and precision, this RTIM/PL approach is much suitable for tailoring highly porous foams with its advantages flexible for shaping complicated scaffolds, free of thermal degradation and high-pressure machine, etc.