**1. Introduction**

Reconstructive surgery for the repair of nose deformities is challenging [1]. Nasal surgery involves autologous rib or septum cartilage grafts [2] and prosthetic devices [3] for recon‐ struction and reinforcement of the nasal skeleton. These conventional procedures are associ‐ ated with donor site morbidity, limited tissue availability, and prosthesis related infection and extrusion [4]. Although tissue engineering is a promising method for repair and reconstruction of cartilage defects [5- 7], engineering cartilage with a delicate three dimensional (3D) structure, such as human nose, remains a great challenge in this field. Since in 1997 Cao *et al*. engineered the cartilage with a shape of human auricle in a nude mouse model [8], many researchers have tried to explore further developments of this tissue engineering system, but few of them have succeeded in *in vitro* regeneration of a cartilage construct with a complete and anatomically refined structure [9].

One major reason leading to the failure of *in vitro* engineering a cartilage construct with sufficient control over shape is the lack of appropriate scaffolds. The optimal scaffold used for engineering a cartilage construct with accurate designed shapes should possess at least three characteristics: good biocompatibility for cell seeding, ease of being processed into a specific shape, and sufficient mechanical strength for retaining the pre-designed shape. Polyglycolic acid (PGA) has proven to be one of the most successful scaffolds for cartilage regeneration [10- 12]. Cartilage engineered with the PGA scaffold has structure and composition similar to the native tissue, as demonstrated by histological analysis and cartilage specific matrices [13- 15]. However, the most widely used form of PGA material in cartilage engineering is unwoven fiber mesh, which is difficult to be initially prepared into a complicated 3D structure and would most likely fail to maintain its original architecture during subsequent *in vitro* chondrogenesis due to insufficient mechanical support [14, 16, 17].

© 2013 Li et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

To overcome these problems, two crucial issues should be addressed. First, the PGA-based scaffold should be prefabricated into the exact shape of human nose. Second, the mechanical strength of the above-mentioned scaffold should be further enhanced so that it can retain the pre-designed shape.

In order to meet these requirements, in the current study, a computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technique was employed to fabricate a set of negative molds, which was then used to press the PGA fibers into the pre-designed nose structure. Further‐ more, the mechanical strength of the scaffold was enhanced by coating the PGA fibers with an optimized amount of PLA.
