Robotic microassembly of tissue engineering scaffold

Abstract

This thesis proposed and evaluated a novel technique to design and fabricate TE scaffold/cell constructs based on robotic microassembly. TE scaffolds are created by assembling microscopic building bloacks of biodegradable/bioresobable material. The idea is that each micro building block can be coated and processed to have specific morphology and chemical properties, and then assembled to the required place in the scaffold in a biocompatible environment. It allows to design customized scaffolds with individual pore morphology, pore network interconnections, material and distribution, as well as scaffold porosity etc. Integration of specifice structures to generate a vascular system becomes possible.