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P. Steinbauer, S. Orman, C. Hofstetter, M. Schwentenwein, G. Russmüller, J. Stampfl, R. Liska, S. Baudis:
"Biocompatible photopolymer scaffolds tailored for patient specific solutions for bone tissue regeneration";
Poster: 11th World Biomaterials Congress, Hampshire, United Kingdom, online; 12-11-2020 - 12-15-2020; in: "11th World Biomaterials Congress", WBC2020VIR-4577 (2020), 1 pages.

Digital light processing stereolithography (DLP-SLA) as a method of additive manufacturing technologies (AMT´s) facilitates the opportunity to manufacture biocompatible, patient-specific materials for bone tissue engineering approaches.[1,2] Most frequently used resins are based on (meth)acrylates, which result in highly crosslinked materials with often poor mechanical properties . Additionally, methacrylates exhibit questionable cytotoxicity and resulting polymer networks degrade unfavorably to polyacids. Established vinyl ester (VE) monomers emerge as promising biocompatible precursors for photopolymers [3]. These systems contain considerably lower cytotoxicity [4] and polyvinyl alcohol as favorable degradation product [5]. These DLP-SLA processable monomers now enable the production of patient-specific, tailored scaffolds for bone tissue engineering (see Figure 1). Photopolymers show very low toughness in general due to their characteristic polymer architecture. Due to the polymer architecture, photopolymers often have low toughness, but this can be improved to ensure fixation of implants by screws via high molecular weight co-monomers as well as chain transfer agents.

biocompatible polymers, additive manufacturing, bone tissue regeneration