An innovative method to induce cell ingrowth through 3D porous scaffolds by poor cell adhesive coatings

Every year a large part of western countries' medical charges is assigned to medical care of patients suffering from tissues and/or organs alterations. Health centers spend for this purposes more than 10 million euro/year and this expense grow continuously due to the population mean age's increase. Tissue engineering (TE) represents a valid alternative to organ/tissue transplantation. A fundamental step for TE is the cell seeding directly on porous tridimensional artificial structures called scaffolds. However on artificial polymer scaffolds made of PCL or PLA as an example often higher cell colonization at the periphery and inadequate colonization at the center of the scaffold were noted due to the hydrophobic character of the materials [1,2]. In this work a single and multistep innovative approaches based on plasma technology are proposed as an interesting alternative. A plasma deposition of Polyethylene oxide like (PEO-like) coatings is proposed alone and in combination with O2 plasma treatment to stimulate cell ingrowth.