Growth of the chorioallantoic membrane into a rapid-prototyped model pore system: experiments and mathematical model

This paper presents a mathematical model to describe the growth of tissue into a rapid-prototyped porous scaffold when it is implanted onto the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM). The scaffold was designed to study the effects of the size and shape of pores on tissue growth into conventional tissue engineering scaffolds, and consists of an array of pores each having a pre-specified shape. The experimental observations revealed that the CAM grows through each pore as an intact layer of tissue, provided the width of the pore exceeds a threshold value. Based on these results a mathematical model is described to simulate the growth of the membrane, assuming that the growth is a function of the local isotropic membrane tension. The model predictions are compared against measurements of the extent of membrane growth through the pores as a function of time for pores with different dimensions.