Bioactive Glass Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

In materials science, the ability to develop porous constructs with high mechanical strength is important for a broad range of emerging applications, including filters, catalyst support, and tissue engineering scaffolds. Particularly for orthopedic surgery, the regeneration of large bone defects in load-bearing limbs remains a challenging problem that require scaffolds that combine the strength required for a load bearing application with the large porosities needed to ensure cell survival and tissue regeneration . Direct ink write as a layer-by-layer assembly technique has been used to fabricate constructs with materials including polymeric, sol-gel, and ceramic inks. The technique can be used to build scaffolds whose structure follows a computer design. In that way, the scaffold architecture can be controlled and optimized to achieve the desired mechanical response, accelerate the boneregeneration process, and guide the formation of bone with the anatomic cortical-trabecular structure. The aim of this work was to fabricate bioactive 6P53B glass scaffold by direct-ink-write assembly of a hydrogel-based ink, and to evaluate their in vitro degradation and mechanical response.