Fabrication of porous polycaprolactone scaffolds for tissue engineering.

Using synthetic polymers, scaffolds can be created for tissue engineering. The goal of this project was to fabricate and evaluate porous PCL scaffolds for cartilage-tissue engineering. By varying molecular weight and porosity, scaffolds were ultimately designed for cell seeding. Three molecular weights were tested, as well as four different salt/polymer ratios. High molecular-weight scaffolds with a high salt/polymer ratio proved to be the most promising for in vitro growth of chondrocytes