New type of biodegradable porous scaffolds for tissue-engineered articular cartilage

Three-dimensional biodegradable porous scaffolds play an important role in tissue engineering. We created double-layered porous scaffolds composed of synthetic biodegradable polymers by combining freeze-drying and porogen leaching techniques to create tissue-engineered articular cartilage. The pore structures had two layers, a leaching side (upper) and a freeze-drying side (lower). The latter had columnar pores to simulate a radial zone, while the leaching side simulated the tangential zone of the articular cartilage. In this study, we showed that this structure enabled the uniform seeding of goat chondrocytes in the scaffolds, and with low rates of leakage.