Electrospinning and emerging healthcare and medicine possibilities

Abstract

Electrospinning forms fibers from either an electrically charged polymer solution or polymer melt. Over the past decades, it has become a simple and versatile method for nanofiber production. Hence, it has been explored in many different applications. Commonly used electrospinning assembles fibers from polymer solutions in various solvents, known as solution electrospinning, while melt and near-field electrospinning techniques enhance the versatility of electrospinning. Adaption of additive manufacturing strategy to electrospinning permits precise fiber deposition and predefining pattern construction. This manuscript critically presents the potential of electrospun nanofibers in healthcare applications. Research community drew impetus from the similarity of electrospun nanofibers to the morphology and mechanical properties of fibrous extracellular matrices (ECM) of natural human tissues. Electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds act as ECM analogs for specific tissue cells, stem cells, and tumor cells to realize tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, and in vitro tumor model construction. The large surface-to-volume ratio of electrospun nanofibers offers a considerable number of bioactive agents binding sites, which makes it a promising candidate for a number of biomedical applications. The applications of electrospinning in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, controlled drug delivery, biosensors, and cancer diagnosis are elaborated. Electrospun nanofiber incorporations in medical device coating, in vitro 3D cancer model, and filtration membrane are also discussed.

Electrospun Fibres with Hyaluronic Acid-Chitosan Nanoparticles Produced by a Portable Device

“…Electrospun fibres have been widely used as scaffolds for TE, as they are able to partially mimic the structure and spatial topographies of the natural extracellular matrix (ECM) [ 3 , 4 ], and therefore improve cell adhesion, proliferation and differentiation [ 5 ], as well as reducing implant rejection [ 6 ]. Moreover, the structures produced by electrospinning yield excellent mechanical properties [ 7 ] and offer unique ones such as a high surface-area-to-volume ration and interfibrous porosity [ 5 , 6 , 7 ].…”

“…Biomedical applications of electrospun fibres have focused, mainly, on fibrous scaffolds for tissue engineering, wound dressing, antibacterial studies, biosensors, enzyme immobilization for faster reaction rates in biological reactions and drug delivery [ 4 , 5 ]. However, nanofibers have a high fabrication complexity and moderate biomimicry [ 15 ].…”

“…The enhancement of electrospun fibres with antibiotics, analgesics and other drugs [ 9 ] and using them to create tissue engineering scaffolds is particularly attractive for site-specific delivery. Nevertheless, electrospinning drugs directly with the fibres might result in the loss of biological activity, low encapsulation efficiency, uneven drug distribution, compromised sterile environment, and burst release [ 4 ]. Moreover, the addition of drugs to the polymer solution could affect the polymer’s properties (e.g., viscosity), therefore impacting fibre fabrication [ 4 ].…”

“…Nevertheless, electrospinning drugs directly with the fibres might result in the loss of biological activity, low encapsulation efficiency, uneven drug distribution, compromised sterile environment, and burst release [ 4 ]. Moreover, the addition of drugs to the polymer solution could affect the polymer’s properties (e.g., viscosity), therefore impacting fibre fabrication [ 4 ].…”

“…Drug-loaded nanoparticle encapsulation, also considered to be a ”smart” drug delivery system [ 4 ], offers target-specific and triggerable drug delivery. NPs are usually embedded into electrospun fibres by direct incorporation during the electrospinning process or as a post-treatment.…”