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The fast-progressing landscape of the bioprocessing industry emphasizes innovation and efficiency enhancement, propelled by the integration of advanced solutions. Additive manufacturing technologies, particularly laserbased powder bed fusion with polypropylene, are pivotal in this industrial metamorphosis. However, despite the substantial scientific effort in the field, a significant gap exists in comprehending the surface characteristics of new surfaces and their implications for bacterial attachment and biofilm formation. This arises, in part, due to the absence of comprehensive and universally applicable topographical characterization analysis specifically designed for additively manufactured-fabricated surfaces. Typically, researchers tend to rely on the commonly used roughness parameter, Sa, that primarily quantifies the average height variation across a surface. Addressing this limitation is crucial for understanding the connection between surface characteristics and bacterial attachment dynamics. Here, we propose an innovative approach using surface analysis including confocal microscopy, advanced roughness measurements, and multivariate statistical analysis to uncover the connections between bacterial attachment for Gram negative Escherichia coli and Gram positive Staphylococcus aureus in early biofilm formation with surfaces produced by standardized and additively manufactured techniques. Finally, we advocate for the adoption of a set of roughness parameters that specifically describe the dale region of the surfaces. By doing so, we intend to establish direct links between surface texture and bacterial adhesion, thus contributing significantly to the advancement of both bioprocessing and additive manufacturing research domains., QC 20240722

QC 20240906

Although additive manufacturing through melt extrusion has become increasingly popular as a route to design scaffolds with complex geometries the technique if often limited by the reduction in molecular weight and the viscoelastic response when degradable aliphatic polyesters of high molecular weight are used. Here we use a melt extruder and fused filament fabrication printer to produce a reliable nondegradative route for scaffold fabrication of medical grade copolymers of L-lactide, poly(epsilon-caprolactone-co-L-lactide), and poly(L-lactide-co-trimethylene carbonate). We show that degradation is avoided using filament extrusion and fused filament fabrication if the process parameters are deliberately chosen based upon the rheological behavior, mechanical properties, and polymer composition. Structural, mechanical, and thermal properties were assessed throughout the process to obtain comprehension of the relationship between the rheological properties and the behavior of the medical grade copolymers in the extruder and printer. Scaffolds with a controlled architecture were achieved using high-molecular-weight polyesters exhibiting a large range in the elastic response causing negligible degradation of the polymers., QC 20200217