Cellular interactions with bacterial cellulose: Polycaprolactone nanofibrous scaffolds produced by a portable electrohydrodynamic gun for point‐of‐need wound dressing

Abstract

Electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds are promising regenerative wound dressing options but have yet to be widely used in practice. The challenge is that nanofibre productions rely on bench-top apparatuses, and the delicate product integrity is hard to preserve before reaching the point of need. Timing is critically important to wound healing. The purpose of this investigation is to produce novel nanofibrous scaffolds using a portable, hand-held "gun", which enables production at the wound site in a time-dependent fashion, thereby preserving product integrity. We select bacterial cellulose, a natural hydrophilic biopolymer, and polycaprolactone, a synthetic hydrophobic polymer, to generate composite nanofibres that can tune the scaffold hydrophilicity, which strongly affects cell proliferation. Composite scaffolds made of 8 different ratios of bacterial cellulose and polycaprolactone were successfully electrospun. The morphological features and cell-scaffold interactions were analysed using scanning electron microscopy. The biocompatibility was studied using Saos-2 cell viability test. The scaffolds were found to show good biocompatibility and allow different proliferation rates that varied with the composition of the scaffolds. A nanofibrous dressing that can be accurately moulded and standardised via the portable technique is advantageous for wound healing in practicality and in its consistency through mass production.

Fiber Forming Capability of Binary and Ternary Compositions in the Polymer System: Bacterial Cellulose–Polycaprolactone–Polylactic Acid

“…Unaligned fibers with extremely low bead frequency were observed at the highest PCL ratio and by gradually decreasing the polymer ratio and increasing BC within the composite structures caused the bead density to increase. Previous studies have reported that increasing the BC concentration within the PCL-BC composites lead to an increase in bead occurrence [7]. Furthermore, incorporation of BC into other polymeric materials also resulted in similar outcomes [16,29].…”

“…This is believed to be related to the aerodynamics in the spinning vessel (Figure 1), providing better evaporation and allowing the fiber jets to travel more and freely without being limited within closed chambers, eventually decreasing the fiber diameter and producing more promising fiber microstructures in the materials. Centrifugal spinning-based methods are devoid of an applied electric field and allow polymers without a charge to be spun with a large production rate [7,39].…”

“…There are certain requirements in designing an effective wound dressing which is compatible with the complex mechanisms of biological regeneration whilst still retaining a low cost. Previous studies have focused on producing biocompatible mats using natural and synthetic polymer blends, tailored into scaffolds consisting of fibrous structures using advanced engineering approaches [4,7,8,9]. Despite the promising results, certain improvements can be made to the wound dressing model using different materials and improving the current production methods.…”

Poly(Caprolactone)‐Poly(N‐Isopropyl Acrylamide)‐Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanofibrous Structure with Stimuli Responsive Drug Release

“…Future work will employ portable medical devices to explore the potential to produce and deliver the functionalized fibers for point of care treatment. [ 59,60 ]…”

Bacterial cellulose micro-nano fibres for wound healing applications

“…Polycaprolactone (PCL) was used as a carrier polymer along with 8 differing ratios of BC to generate BC-PCL composite nanofibres which could be exploited in use as emergency point-of-need wound care using a novel electrohydrodynamic gun (Aydogdu, M. O. et al, 2018). BC was processed into fibres after being suspended in dimethylformamide (DMF) and subjected to ultrasonication to form a gel-like solution that could be mixed with the PCL polymer solution.…”