Using multiphase microfluidics and pore-network modeling for fabrication of tissue regeneration scaffolds

Packings of injectable hydrogel particles provide a porous scaffold for tissue regeneration in which the interconnected network of micro-pores enables accelerated regrowth of the tissue. In this work, we propose a framework for fabrication of porous scaffolds using microfluidic droplet generators and pore-network modeling. We utilize microfluidic droplet generators in jetting regime for high-throughput fabrication of the scaffold building blocks, i.e the spherical microgels. After packing the hydrogel particles in a three-dimensional porous scaffold, we characterize the architecture of the pore network using the Maximal-Ball modeling. The extracted features of the pore network such as the pore size distribution and the pore connectivity are then related to the regrowth rate of human bone-marrow mesenchymal stem cells. The insight gained by comparing the cell growth rate and characteristics of the pore network is used as a feedback to modulate the size of the microgel particles in the microfluidic droplet generator.