• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.512-519
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential of a novel tissue engineering approach to regenerate intervertebral disc. In this study, thermosensitive scaffold (chitosan-Pluronic hydrogel) and nanofiber were used to replace the nucleus pulposus (NP) and annulus fibrosus of a degenerated intervertebral disc, leading to an eventual regeneration of the disc using the minimally invasive surgical procedure and organ culture. In preliminary study, disc cells were seeded into the scaffolds and cellular responses were assessed by MTT assay and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Based on these results, we could know that tissue engineered scaffolds might provide favorable environments for the regeneration of tissues. Organ culture was performed in fresh porcine spinal motion segments with endplates on both sides. These spinal motion segments were classified into three groups: control (Intact), injured NP (Defect), and inserting tissue engineered scaffolds (Insert). The specimens were cultivated for 7 days, subsequently structural stability, cell proliferation and morphological changes were evaluated by the relaxation time, quantity of DNA, GAG and histological examination. In these results, inserting group showed higher relaxation time, reduced decrement of DNA contents, and accumulated GAG amount. Consequently, the tissue engineered scaffolds used in this study seen to be a promising base scaffolds for regenerative intervertebral disc due to its capacity to absorb external dynamic loading and the possible ideal environment provided for disc cell growing.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.1754-1759
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• 2008

To produce plastic parts that have fine pattern through conventional injection molding, a lot of difficulties follow. Therefore, rapid heating and cooling methods are good candidates for manufacturing injection-molded parts with micro/nano patterns. In this study, we adopted the E-Mold patent technology. The mold for E-Mold technology has a separate heated core with micro heaters. It is very important to optimize the lay-out of the heaters in heated core because it influences both control and distribution of mold temperature. We developed a optimization method of heating line lay-out by using commercial softwares and compared the output with the experimental results. We used Pro-Engineer Wildfire 2.0 for the mold design, ICEMCFD for mesh generation, and FLUENT for heat transfer simulation. The simulation results showed the temperature profile from $60^{\circ}C$ to $120^{\circ}C$ or $180^{\circ}C$ during heating and cooling process which were compared with the injection molding experiments. We concluded that the simulation could well explain the experimental results. It was shown that the E-Mold optimization design for heater lay-out could be available through the simulation.