Mathematical modeling of curvature-based cell/tissue growth on open porous scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

摘要: Open porous scaffolds are widely used constructs in a wide range of tissue engineering disciplines as initial support for the subsequent cell growth and tissue development. A suitable construct should be able to promote cell growth with a homogeneous cell distribution. While physicochemical and biological properties of scaffolds are understood to affect the cell growth process, it has been proved by several studies that their architectural and geometrical characteristics, such as pore size and shape as well as curvature, play a significant role in the efficiency of the scaffolds in terms of cell attachment and growth during in vitro culture [1]. These parameters should be optimized to enhance cell growth and proliferation rate, requiring dedicated in vitro and in vivo investigations.In addition to in vitro and in vivo models, a third class of models is getting momentum for aiding tissue engineering designs prior to conducting costly experimental efforts, namely in silico or computational models. This approach can be employed for various aspects of the scaffold design process such as material selection, mechanical properties, mass transfer, and structure (topology) optimization. However, this needs computational models of the neotissue (cell+ extracellular matrix) growth process to evaluate the efficiency of different designs. These computational models should be able to take into account the effect of topological features of the scaffold, the most important of which is the curvature because it affects cell density and contraction or expansion of the local surface area [2].