Computer aided biomanufacturing of mechanically robust pure collagen meshes with controlled macroporosity

Reconciliation of high strength and high porosity in pure collagen based structures is a major barrier in collagen's use in load-bearing applications. The current study developed a CAD/CAM based electrocompaction method to manufacture highly porous patterned scaffolds using pure collagen. Utilization of computerized scaffold design and fabrication allows the integration of mesh-scaffolds with controlled pore size, shape and spacing. Mechanical properties of fabricated collagen meshes were investigated as a function of number of patterned layers, and with different pore geometries. The tensile stiffness, tensile strength and modulus ranges from 10-50 N cm(-1), 1-6 MPa and 5-40 MPa respectively for all the scaffold groups. These results are within the range of practical usability of different tissue engineering application such as tendon, hernia, stress urinary incontinence or thoracic wall reconstruction. Moreover, 3-fold increase in the layer number resulted in more than 5-fold increases in failure load, toughness and stiffness which suggests that by changing the number of layers and shape of the structure, mechanical properties can be modulated for the aforementioned tissue engineering application. These patterned scaffolds offer a porosity ranging from 0.8 to 1.5 mm in size, a range that is commensurate with pore sizes of repair meshes in the market. The connected macroporosity of the scaffolds facilitated cell-seeding such that cells populated the entire scaffold at the time of seeding. After 3 d of culture, cell nuclei became elongated. These results indicate that the patterned electrochemical deposition method in this study was able to develop mechanically robust, highly porous collagen scaffolds with controlled porosity which not only tries to solve one of the major tissue engineering problems at a fundamental level but also has a significant potential to be used in different tissue engineering applications.