Microfabricated biodegradable scaffolds for tissue engineering of vital organs

Microfabrication has been demonstrated as a platform technology for the fabrication of scaffolds for tissue engineering of vital Organs. The principal advantage of this technology over existing approaches is the ability to fabricate micron-scale features such as capillaries that predominate the organ vasculature. Biocompatible polymers such as PDMS are useful for demonstration Purposes, but a fully implantable replacement organ construct requires biodegradable materials. Earlier reports by this group described the development of microfabrication techniques capable of producing microfluidic structures for organ vasculature using the biodegradable polymer PLGA (poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid.)) In this paper, a process for the fabrication of high resolution three-dimensional biodegradable scaffolds capable of co-culture of vascular and parenchymal cells is described. Processing of these constructs requires the bonding of multiple sheets of micromachined PLGA vessel networks together with layers which comprise the parenchymal compartments of the organ, separated by thin nanoporous PLGA membranes. These three-dimensional constructs may then be seeded with the appropriate cell types and cultured to form organoid replicas. This technology will ultimately be scaled up to produce sufficient numbers of cells to replace the function of vital organs such as the kidney and liver.