(510bb) Twin Screw Extrusion Processing And Shaping Of Biodegradable Scaffolds With Controlled Morphologies For Tissue Engineering Applications

One of the serious challenges facing the tissue engineering community is the difficulty of being able to reproduce the scaffold structure and functionality under conditions which are amenable to large scale processing and manufacture. Twin screw extrusion process offers unparalleled flexibility and versatility in melting, mixing, devolatilization, pressurization, and shaping with its tunable geometries which involve myriad fully-flighted and kneading disc screw elements, which can be configured to generate scaffolds with the desired distributions of porosity, interfacial and mechanical properties. Here the twin screw extrusion process is employed in conjunction with 3-D FEM analysis of the process, used for guidance in geometry selection, to manufacture scaffolds from PCL and various types of nanoparticles. These scaffolds were used for cell adhesion and proliferation studies involving osteoblast and fibroblasts to demonstrate the versatility of the technology base for the engineering of scaffolds with targeted microstructures and properties.