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Updated: Apr 30, 2026
A Facile and Eco-friendly Route to Fabricate PolyLactic Acid Scaffolds with Graded Pore Size
Published on: October 17, 2016
Solvent-free Fabrication of Tissue Engineering Scaffolds with Immiscible Polymer Blends
Liang Ma1, Wei Jiang2, Wei Li2
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA ; Zhejiang-California International NanoSystems Institute, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China.
Abstract:
A completely organic solvent-free fabrication method is developed for tissue engineering scaffolds by gas foaming of immiscible polylactic acid (PLA) and sucrose blends, followed by water leaching. PLA scaffolds with above 90% porosity and 25-200 μm pore size were fabricated. The pore size and porosity was controlled with process parameters including extrusion temperature and foaming process parameters. Dynamic mechanical analysis showed that the extrusion temperature could be used to control the scaffold strength. Both unfoamed and foamed scaffolds were used to culture glioblastoma (GBM) cells M059K. The results showed that the cells grew better in the foamed PLA scaffolds. The method presented in the paper is versatile and can be used to fabricate tissue engineering scaffolds without any residual organic solvents.
