Cell Attachment to Hydrogel-Electrospun Fiber Mat Composite Materials

Abstract

Hydrogels, electrospun fiber mats (EFMs), and their composites have been extensively studied for tissue engineering because of their physical and chemical similarity to native biological systems. However, while chemically similar, hydrogels and electrospun fiber mats display very different topographical features. Here, we examine the influence of surface topography and composition of hydrogels, EFMs, and hydrogel-EFM composites on cell behavior. Materials studied were composed of synthetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PEGPCL) hydrogels and electrospun poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and core/shell PCL/PEGPCL constituent materials. The number of adherent cells and cell circularity were most strongly influenced by the fibrous nature of materials (e.g., topography), whereas cell spreading was more strongly influenced by material composition (e.g., chemistry). These results suggest that cell attachment and proliferation to hydrogel-EFM composites can be tuned by varying these properties to provide important insights for the future design of such composite materials.

Novel biomimetic fiber incorporated scaffolds for tissue engineering

“…The result is shown in Figure 4b. Consistently with the literature (Han et al, 2012), the measured contact angle of untreated PCL electrospun mats was 116 ± 2 , while the PCL fiber mesh after UV irradiation showed slightly lower contact angle of 96 ± 3 . When treated with plasma treatment, the contact angles decreased greatly to 84 ± 3 and 13 ± 1 after 1 and 3 min, respectively.…”

“…From a structural perspective, an ideal scaffold should possess interconnected macro pores with sizes from 10 to 100 μm to facilitate cell infiltration and tissue formation, as well as similar topography of natural ECM that would have an impact on cell behavior such as cell adhesion and gene expression (Han et al, 2012;McMurtrey, 2014;Sakai et al, 2008;Sun et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2014). For that purpose, here we developed a fabrication process to incorporate electrospun short fibers within biopolymer scaffold for tissue engineering applications.…”

“…Here we propose a biomimetic fiber incorporated scaffold by integrating electrospun short fibers with freeze-dried porous structure. On one hand, the fiberincorporated scaffold offers suitable pores for efficient cell seeding and provides a fibrous structure on the walls of the pores mimicking the fibrous topography of natural ECM (Borjigin et al, 2013;Han et al, 2012;McMurtrey, 2014;Rivet et al, 2015). On the other hand, the addition of short fibers also increases the mechanical property of the scaffold by providing structural reinforcement (Butcher, Offeddu, & Oyen, 2014;Sakai, Takagi, Yamada, Yamaguchi, & Kawakami, 2008;Visser et al, 2015) without the sacrifice of reducing the pore size.…”

Meniscus tissue engineering using a novel combination of electrospun scaffolds and human meniscus cells embedded within an extracellular matrix hydrogel

“…One study used a blend of PCL and gelatin but only reported a compressive strength of about 20 kPa . Synthetically reinforced hydrogel‐ES scaffold composite materials improved cell proliferation, and attachment and spreading of neuroblastoma and rat cortical neuron cells that were attributed to the topography of the ES fibers . We used a different approach to assemble nanofibrous scaffolds into complex architectures by stacking multiple layers of fibers sequentially deposited on top of one another (∼1.5 mm total thickness) for proof‐of‐concept engineering of fiber‐reinforced meniscal tissues.…”

Neural tissue engineering: nanofiber‐hydrogel based composite scaffolds

“…Figures and clearly show the cellular orientations based on the fiber orientation and neurite extensions in the composite matrix respectively. The surface roughness and hydrophilic nature of SA and laminin might contribute to the increased cell–matrix interaction …”