On the development of scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

Abstract

Many of the current tissue-engineering scaffold-based strategies have suffered from limited cell depth viability when cultured in vitro, with viable cells existing within the outer 250-500 μm from the fluid-scaffold interface. This is primarily believed to be due to the lack of nutrient delivery into and waste removal from the inner regions of the scaffold construct. Other issues associated with scaffolds involve poor seeding efficiencies and limited cell penetration resulting in heterogenous cellular distributions.