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Lasers have been used to fabricate tiny scaffolds to be used as delivery vehicles to drop cells off at damaged locations and help treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Owing to the versatility and accuracy of lasers, the structures have shown significant potential for facilitating the growth of cells and could be designed specifically to meet the individual needs of a variety of cells.
In their study published today, Tuesday 20 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Biofabrication, researchers used lasers to create intricate scaffolds, with features one thousand times smaller than a millimetre, and demonstrated their ability to effectively harness the growth of neuronal cells.
The repairing of neural tissue for example peripheral nerves, spinal cord and the brain has long been investigated using a technique known as tissue engineering and is now becoming a realistic treatment as technology advances.
A multidisciplinary field in which tissues and organs are formed by growing cells onto materials outside of the body, tissue engineering relies heavily on the creation of scaffolds which determine the efficiency, size, shape and orientation of cell growth.
By fine-tuning the make-up and design of these scaffolds, they could be used as a delivery vehicle to drop cells off at a specific damaged location, help them attach and grow, and then become degraded in the body without any damage to the cells or the host.
In this study, the researchers, from the University of Crete and the University of Sheffield, fabricated a scaffold from a commonly used polymer, polylactic acid (PLA). This synthetic, biocompatible material degrades in the human body to form lactic acid, a naturally occurring chemical that can easily be removed, leaving the regenerated tissue behind in the required size, shape and structure.
An ultra-fast, titanium sapphire laser was tightly focused on the PLA material a
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| Contact: Mike Bishop michael.bishop@iop.org 44-011-793-91032 Institute of Physics Source:Eurekalert |
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