Gas-in-Liquid Foam Templating as a Method for the Production of Highly Porous Scaffolds

In the present work, a novel synthetic methodology for the preparation of scaffold of biopolymeric nature is described In particular, a porous gelatin scaffold was prepared by foam templating The gas phase, nitrogen, was generated by means of the reaction between sulfamic acid and sodium nitrite in situ a concentrated solution of gelatin and in the presence of a suitable polymeric surfactant in association with sodium dodecyl Sulfate. The foam was prepared at a temperature of 45 degrees C and then let gel at 5 degrees C. After purification, the physical gel was auto-cross-linked with EDC and freeze-dried. The scaffold synthesized with this technique presents a morphology characterized by voids of spherical symmetry highly interconnected by a plurality of interconnects, and, as a consequence, is particularly suited for cell culturing. In more quantitative terms, voids and interconnects are ;characterized by in average diameter of 230 and 90 mu m, respectively Preliminary tests of cell culturing demonstrated the suitability of such a scaffold for tissue engineering applications.