Assessment of PCL/carbon material scaffolds for bone regeneration

Biomanufacturing is a relatively new research domain focusing on the use of additive manufacturing technologies, biomaterials, cells and biomolecular signals to produce tissue constructs for tissue engineering. For bone regeneration, researchers are focusing on the use of polymeric and polymer/ceramic scaffolds seeded with osteoblasts or mesenchymal stem cells. However, high-performance scaffolds in terms of mechanical, cell-stimulation and biological performance is still required. This paper investigates the use of an extrusion additive manufacturing system to produce poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL), PCL/graphene nanosheet and PCL carbon nanotube (CNT) scaffolds for bone applications. Scaffolds with regular and reproducible architecture and uniform dispersion of carbon materials were produced and evaluated in terms of carbon material concentration and biological performance. Results suggest that the addition of both graphene and CNT can improve the biological performance of the scaffolds, while graphene presented better enhancement effect than CNT.Published versio