Background: Cartilage tissue-engineering scaffold design has mostly focused on the knee joint, leaving the mechanically distinct glenohumeral joint comparatively understudied. This joint is muscle-loaded across a wide, multidirectional arc rather than along one fixed axis, and its cartilage is thin, favoring an osteochondral rather than purely chondral scaffold format. This study aimed to identify a scaffold configuration suited to the mechanical and geometric limitations of the glenohumeral joint by using three-dimensional (3D)-printed polylactic acid (PLA) and polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds with varying pore architecture and composition.
Methods: In this study, porous PLA and PCL scaffolds varying in pore architecture (honeycomb, gyroid) and composition (PLA, PCL, layered hybrid PLA-PCL) were 3D printed and assessed by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, water contact angle (WCA) measurement, optical microscopy, and mechanical testing (uniaxial compression, three-point bending).
Results: Gyroid architecture reduced elastic modulus to 34–49% compared to the honeycomb architecture across all compositions, moving bulk stiffness closer to native cartilage, and behaved near-isotropically, whereas honeycomb architecture lost most of its stiffness and strength when loaded off-axis. The specimens with gyroid architecture also failed gradually under bending rather than fracturing suddenly. PLA was stiffer and stronger than PCL and the hybrid scaffolds in both architectures. PCL and the hybrid traded elastic modulus against plateau strength. FTIR spectroscopy showed no chemical alteration from printing, and apparent WCAs matched values for flat PLA and PCL films reported in the literature, except for a lower-than-expected WCA for PCL, attributed to surface roughness.
Conclusion: Given its stiffness, near-isotropic behavior, non-brittle failure, and more tunable degradation than PCL alone, a layered PLA-PCL scaffold with gyroid architecture is recommended for further glenohumeral joint application studies.