ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

Sec. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1604515

3D-printed polycaprolactone combined with cartilage acellular matrix tissue engineered cartilage scaffold manufactured by low-temperature deposition manufacturing

Provisionally accepted
Zhen  SongZhen Song1Xulong  ZhangXulong Zhang2Yihao  XuYihao Xu2Jingyuan  JiJingyuan Ji3Wei  SunWei Sun3Fei  FanFei Fan2Jianjun  YouJianjun You2*Yuan  PangYuan Pang3*
  • 1Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
  • 2Plastic Surgery Hospital (PSH), Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences andPeking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
  • 3Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Tissue-engineered cartilage provides an alternative for tissue repair and reconstruction. Composite scaffolds incorporating acellular cartilage matrix (ACM) and synthetic polymers have shown particular promise for cartilage tissue engineering applications. However, the present composite scaffold has not been considered as a clinically available application due to insufficient mechanical property or inflammatory response. This study presents the composite scaffold composed of ACM and polycaprolactone (PCL) prepared by the low-temperature deposition manufacturing (LDM). Through LDM, the ACM was uniformly bond to PCL, resulting in satisfactory mechanical properties of the scaffold. Additionally, the scaffold had a multi-scale structure including microscale pores and nanoscale pores, which increased the porosity of the scaffold. Finally, cartilage-specific extracellular matrix deposition were successfully regenerated in vivo.

Keywords: Tissue engineered cartilage, Cartilage acellular matrix, polycaprolactone, Low-temperature deposition manufacturing, composite scaffold

Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Song, Zhang, Xu, Ji, Sun, Fan, You and Pang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Jianjun You, Plastic Surgery Hospital (PSH), Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences andPeking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100730, China
Yuan Pang, Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, Beijing, China

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