Dependence of cell proliferation on the morphology of starch based scaffolds for tissue engineering

In tissue engineering (TE), several biological, mechanical and geometrical design constraints need to be addressed in order to create an adequate micro-environment for cells response. In this study, the correlation between architectural features of the scaffold construct and cellular behavior was investigated for a blend of starch and polycaprolactone (SPCL). The aim was to determine the effects of scaffold parameters on mechanical properties on cell seeding efficiency and proliferation of human osteoblast-like cells (SaOs-2) of scaffolds obtained via Rapid Prototyping (Bioplotter) and fiber bonding. For fiber bonding, a L8 design of experiment approach was used to produce different scaffold morphologies and properties by systematically varying processing parameters. For rapid prototyping, processing parameters such as filament orientation, offset, and building layers were also varied to obtain dif- ferent structural configurations.