Scaffold design and in vitro study of osteochondral coculture in a three-dimensional porous polycaprolactone scaffold fabricated by fused deposition modeling.

Tissue engineering offers an alternative method that can overcome some of the existing drawbacks of current articular defect repair methods because articular cartilage has a limited capacity to respond to injury. The solution may lie in the design of a three-dimensional load-bearing scaffold. Here we describe the tissue engineering of an osteochondral construct by coculturing osteogenic cells and chondrogenic cells on a three-dimensional load-bearing bioresorbable polymer scaffold. Porous polycaprolactone scaffolds were designed and fabricated via fused deposition modeling. Osteogenic cells were seeded and precultured in one-half of the partitioned scaffolds. Chondrogenic cells were later seeded into the other half. The cell-seeded scaffolds were cultured in a coculture medium. Both cell types proliferated, migrated, linked in their scaffold compartments, and integrated at the interface. Osteoblasts and chondrocytes produced different extracellular matrices in each scaffold compartment. Mineralized nodules deposited in the osteogenic cell seeded compartment. High osteocalcin was detected in precultured osteogenic cell supernatant and high alkaline phosphatase was detected in the coculture supernatant of osteochondral constructs. This study suggests that a tissue-engineered osteochondral construct with a three-dimensional polycaprolactone scaffold has the potential for osteochondral defect repair.