Manufacture and mechanical testing of collagen scaffold with channels

Vascularization is considered as one of the current limitations in thick-tissue engineering. The design of the scaffolds with a network of channels is a promising approach to solve the problem of vascularization in thick artificial tissues. This paper presents a simple approach to make collagen scaffolds with multi-channels by critical point drying and discusses how the channels influence the compressive properties of the scaffolds. The average diameter of the channels within scaffolds is 1.19±0.37mm. Due to the shrinkage of the scaffolds after drying, the relative densities of the scaffolds with different number of channels vary, which results in the difference of compression properties of scaffolds. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.