Kyobum Kim

In this study, a full factorial approach was used to investigate the effects of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) molecular weight (MW; 10,000 vs. 35,000 nominal MW), crosslinker‐to‐macromer carbon–carbon double bond ratio (DBR; 40 vs. 60), crosslinker type (PEG‐diacrylate (PEGDA) vs. N,N′‐methylene bisacrylamide (MB)), crosslinking extent of incorporated gelatin microparticles (low vs. high), and incubation medium composition (with or without collagenase) on the swelling and degradation characteristics of oligo[(poly(ethylene glycol) fumarate)] (OPF) hydrogel composites as indicated by the swelling ratio and the percentage of mass remaining, respectively. Each factor consisted of two levels, which were selected based on previous in vitro and in vivo studies utilizing these hydrogels for various tissue engineering applications. Fractional factorial analyses of the main effects indicated that the mean swelling ratio and the mean percentage of mass remaining of OPF composite hydrogels were significantly affected by every factor. In particular, increasing the PEG chain MW of OPF macromers significantly increased the mean swelling ratio and decreased the mean percentage of mass remaining by 5.7 ± 0.3 and 17.2 ± 0.6%, respectively. However, changing the crosslinker from MB to PEGDA reduced the mean swelling ratio and increased the mean percentage of mass remaining of OPF composite hydrogels by 4.9 ± 0.2 and 9.4 ± 0.9%, respectively. Additionally, it was found that the swelling characteristics of hydrogels fabricated with higher PEG chain MW or with MB were more sensitive to increases in DBR. Collectively, the main and cross effects observed between factors enables informed tuning of the swelling and degradation properties of OPF‐based hydrogels for various tissue engineering applications. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 102A: 3477–3487, 2014.

Highly accurate rendering of the external and internal geometry of bone tissue engineering scaffolds affects fit at the defect site, loading of internal pore spaces with cells, bioreactor-delivered nutrient and growth factor circulation, and scaffold resorption. It may be necessary to render resorbable polymer scaffolds with 50 µm or better accuracy to achieve these goals. This level of accuracy is available using Continuous Digital Light Processing (cDLP) which utilizes a DLP® (Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX) chip. One such additive manufacturing device is the envisionTEC (Ferndale, MI) Perfactory®. To use cDLP we integrate a photo-crosslinkable polymer, a photo-initiator, and a biocompatible dye. The dye attenuates light, thereby limiting the depth of polymerization. In this study we fabricated scaffolds using the well-studied resorbable polymer, poly(propylene fumarate) (PPF), titanium dioxide (TiO₂) as a dye, Irgacure® 819 (BASF [Ciba], Florham Park, NJ) as an initiator, and diethyl fumarate as a solvent to control viscosity.