Scaffold informatics: multi-material strategies for tissue scaffolds

The dominant approach in 3D tissue engineering is to construct a scaffold of biocompatible material, to seed the scaffold with an appropriate cell type, to culture these cells in a bioreactor, and to implant the resulting tissue construct. Numerous individual materials have been investigated, but no single material has proven ideal for tissue culture. We advocate the use of multiple materials within a single scaffold. Such scaffolds would be produced using a 3D positioning system possessing multiple heads, capable of both fused deposition and droplet deposition of multiple materials. Our candidate materials for heterogenous deposition include poly-ε-caprolactone(PCL), alginate, fibrin, and chitosan. This paper discusses 1) the design of the hardware necessary to perform this operation, 2) the considerations in selecting candidate materials, and 3) the anticipated benefits to design and construction of tissue scaffolds.