Fabrication of 3D Scaffolds via E-Jet Printing for Tendon Tissue Repair

Abstract

Current clinical grafts used in tendon treatment are subject to several restrictions and there is a significant demand for alternative engineered tissue. The previously reported tendon scaffolds mainly based on electrospinning and textile technologies showed promising results for tendon regeneration. However, limitations, such as small pore size, nutrition transmission, cell attachment, exist universally in such scaffolds. In this work, a novel tissue engineered polycaprolactone (PCL) tendon scaffold based on electrohydrodynamic jet printing (E-Jetting) was developed for investigation. In preliminary in-vitro study, human tenocytes were seeded in scaffolds with pore size of ∼106 μm to investigate the cell attachment, morphology and alignment. This study suggested that E-jetted tendon scaffold highly mimicked hierarchical construction from fiber to fascicle level of the native tendon, and has potential to be an alternative tendon regeneration tool.