METHOD FOR PREPARING POROUS, BIODEGRADABLE AND BIOCOMPATIBLE, POLYMERIC SCAFFOLDS FOR TISSUE ENGINEERING

摘要

Disclosed is a method for preparing three-dimensional, biodegradable and biocompatible, porous, polymeric scaffolds for tissue engineering. A biodegradable and biocompatible polymer is dissolved in an inorganic solvent to give a highly concentrated solution with high viscosity. The polymeric solution is homogeneously mixed with an effervescent salt, followed by the removal of the organic solvent from the resulting polymer/salt/organic solvent mixed gel. Submerging the organic solvent-free polymeric/salt gel slurry in a hot aqueous solution or acidic solution to effervesce the salt, resulting in a porous structure which is then washed with distilled water and freeze-dried to yield a scaffold which is suitable for cell or tissue culture. The scaffold is so porous and interconnective among pores as to accommodate and culture cells isolated from the tissues to be cultured. The method has an advantage of easily shaping the cell culture matrix in desirable forms with the gel and controlling the pore size and porosity of the three-dimensional porous, polymeric scaffolds by controlling the amount and size of the effervescent salts and the concentration of the acidic aqueous solutions by which the effervescence and leaching-off of the salts are induced.