Rapid Prototyping Technology of Tissue Engineering Scaffold.docVIP

Rapid Prototyping Technology of Tissue Engineering Scaffold 【Abstract】In the modern medicine field， the transplant of organ and tissue is a big problem due to serious shortage of donor organ. Artificial organ and tissue is one of solutions. With the development of science， various tissue manufacture techniques emerged. Hereinto， due to its versatility both in materials and structure， rapid prototyping technology has become one of the important methods for tissue engineering scaffold fabrication in this field. 【Key words】Tissue engineering；Scaffold；Rapid prototyping；Scaffold fabrication；Tissue transplantation 0 Backgrounds Nowadays， because the demands of organs and tissues for transplant increase fast which lead to a big gap between supply and demand of transplant. In the year 2000， there are about 72，000 people need an organ transplant， but only 23，000 transplants were supplied. [1] Recently， a new method called cell transplantation has been used. It is believed that the isolated cells from donor can be cultured in vitro to form suitable tissue， but these isolated cells cannot form new tissues by themselves. Meanwhile， maybe only a small quantity of these cells could be appropriate for implants. Hence， the suitable substrates and environment condition play a critical role for cell growth. For example， the tissue engineering scaffolds could provide three-dimensional structure and frame with specific chemical and physical characters. 1 Tissue engineering Tissue engineering involves many fields， such as biology， materials engineering and especially in clinical research which aims to create new tissues and organs for implantation. Once upon a time， tissue engineering was considered as embranchment of bioengineering， but nowadays， it has become a significant independent subject and field. Through the combination and cooperation of cells and suitable biochemical methods， it could improve or replace human biological functions. In practice， the tissue engineering has a bro