Nonwoven scaffolds for bone regeneration

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of nonwoven scaffolds using natural and synthetic biomaterials, highlighting manufacturing techniques like electrospinning for bone regeneration applications.

Contribution

It introduces methods for producing nonwoven scaffolds with suitable pore sizes and explores manufacturing technologies for biomimetic bone regeneration scaffolds.

Findings

Electrospinning effectively creates scaffolds with controlled pore sizes.

Various nonwoven architectures can be tailored through manufacturing parameters.

Opportunities exist for other nonwoven technologies in biomimetic scaffold development.

Abstract

Developing successful scaffolds requires clinicians to adopt a multidisciplinary approach in order to understand and stimulate the natural bone regeneration process. A variety of natural and synthetic biomaterials, including naturally extracted, chemically functionalised collagen and synthetic Poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL), can be manufactured into fibres, enabling the formation of nonwoven scaffolds. Many different nonwoven architectures and structural features can then be introduced, depending on the manufacturing parameters. This chapter introduces methods for producing scaffolds with appropriate pore sizes by means of electrospinning, and it outlines the opportunities that exist for other nonwoven manufacturing technologies in the development of biomimetic products.