Fabrication of customisable collagen-based medical devices

Tissue engineering describes the combination of cells and biomaterials for the successful reconstruction of biological tissues. Naturally, a wide selection of biomaterials exists depending on the tissue of interest. Collagen is an abundant structural protein in the human body and is therefore a regular choice when fabricating biotissue analogues. As such, the tunability of mechanical and biological properties becomes very important when replicating the biological environment in vitro. Different methods for forming three-dimensional (3D) networks in biopolymers exist depending on the required mechanical and biological properties. One technique, electrocompaction, was reported to produce constructs with highly aligned collagen fibres, yielding much denser and stiffer scaffolds when compared to gelled collagen. In this research, we have shown how the underlying principle of electrocompaction was adapted to form curved and tubular collagen scaffolds.