Bioresorbable materials and additive manufacturing process for medical implants

The application of additive manufacturing technologies in tissue engineering has been growing in recent years. Among different technology options, 3D printing is becoming popular due to the ability to directly print scaffolds with designed shape and has great potential like manufacturing method in the production of scaffolds for tissue engineering. Applications of additive manufacturing in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering are restricted for the available materials for each technology. A great part of the research has focused on the development of new materials to be used to create complex geometries, culture different kind of cells from a different types of tissues and applications. In this work, recent developed additive manufacturing techniques and biomaterials for vascular and bone tissue are studied. The objective of tissue engineering is to produce functional and viable structures and multiple biomaterials and fabrication methods need to be researched. To achieve this purpose, the fabrication of bifurcated vascular grafts using the combination of electrospinning and 3D printing, and the characterization of a new biomaterial for bone regeneration applications, were explored. Polycaprolactone (PCL) was used to electrospun a mandrel obtaining a bifurcated construct that was morphological and mechanical characterized. For bone regeneration applications, a new resorbable biomaterial was investigated. Process parameters and materials properties, such as separation force and green strength were studied in order to probe the printability of this material, compositional changes, or defects during the 3D printing process, of porous structures using Continuous Digital Light Processing (cDLP) and Isosorbide.