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Background:
Repairs to deep skin wounds continue to be a difficult issue in clinical practice. A promising approach is to fabricate full-thickness skin substitutes with functions closely similar to those of the natural tissue. For many years, a three-dimensional (3D) collagen hydrogel has been considered to provide a physiological 3D environment for co-cultivation of skin fibroblasts and keratinocytes. This collagen hydrogel is frequently used for fabricating tissue-engineered skin analogues with fibroblasts embedded inside the hydrogel and keratinocytes cultivated on its surface. Despite its unique biological properties, the collagen hydrogel has insufficient stiffness, with a tendency to collapse under the traction forces generated by the embedded cells.
Methods:
The aim of our study was to develop a two-layer skin construct consisting of a collagen hydrogel reinforced by a nanofibrous poly-L-lactide (PLLA) membrane pre-seeded with fibroblasts. The attractiveness of the membrane for dermal fibroblasts was enhanced by coating it with a thin nanofibrous fibrin mesh.
Results:
The fibrin mesh promoted the adhesion, proliferation and migration of the fibroblasts upwards into the collagen hydrogel. Moreover, the fibroblasts spontaneously migrating into the collagen hydrogel showed a lower tendency to contract and shrink the hydrogel by their traction forces. The surface of the collagen was seeded with human dermal keratinocytes. The keratinocytes were able to form a basal layer of highly mitotically-active cells, and a suprabasal layer.
Conclusion:
The two-layer skin construct based on collagen hydrogel with spontaneously immigrated fibroblasts and reinforced by a fibrin-coated nanofibrous membrane seems to be promising for the construction of full-thickness skin substitute.
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