Electrospinning collagen and elastin: preliminary vascular tissue engineering

Abstract

Significant challenges must be overcome before the true benefit and economic impact of vascular tissue engineering can be fully realized. Toward that end, we have pioneered the electrospinning of micro- and nano-fibrous scaffoldings from the natural polymers collagen and elastin and applied these to development of biomimicking vascular tissue engineered constructs. The vascular wall composition and structure is highly intricate and imparts unique biomechanical properties that challenge the development of a living tissue engineered vascular replacement that can withstand the high pressure and pulsatile environment of the bloodstream. The potential of the novel scaffold presented here for the development of a viable vascular prosthetic meets these stringent requirements in that it can replicate the complex architecture of the blood vessel wall. This replication potential creates an "ideal" environment for subsequent in vitro development of a vascular replacement. The research presented herein provides preliminary data toward the development of electrospun collagen and elastin tissue engineering scaffolds for the development of a three layer vascular construct.

Three-dimensional electrospun ECM-based hybrid scaffolds for cardiovascular tissue engineering

“…It has been reported that the natural intermolecular cross-linking of the molecules is disrupted during processing, resulting in scaffold dissolution in aqueous solutions [3,16]. Exposing the electrospun scaffold to glutaraldehyde intermolecularly cross-linked the scaffolds, making cell culturing possible; however, cross-linking reduced the porosity dramatically.…”

“…Exposing the electrospun scaffold to glutaraldehyde intermolecularly cross-linked the scaffolds, making cell culturing possible; however, cross-linking reduced the porosity dramatically. Currently, only glutaraldehyde has been investigated as a cross-linking agent for electrospun collagen based structures [3,16,42,43]. However, glutaraldehyde-treated materials can be cytotoxic [44].…”

“…This high porosity allows the efficient exchange of nutrients and metabolic waste between the scaffold and its environment, and provides a high surface area for local and sustained delivery of biochemical signals to the seeded cells [11][12][13][14][15][16]. On the other hand, the small pore size of reported electrospun scaffolds has thus far shown to be difficult for ingrowth and migration of seeded cells.…”

Structural hierarchy of biomimetic materials for tissue engineered vascular and orthopedic grafts

“…Elastin has been introduced in collagen/elastin based tissue engineered vascular grafts [20] either in gel-derived fibrous products [21] or electrospun micro-and nano-fibrous scaffolds [22,23]. Apart from the purpose of mimicking the artery composition, elastin has been reported to improve the mechanical properties of collagen/elastin scaffolds which would have been too weak to be implanted as vascular grafts if they were based only on collagen [24].…”

Fibers for hearts: A critical review on electrospinning for cardiac tissue engineering

“…Tropoelastin expression and subsequent elastin synthesis typically occurs in fibroblasts, vascular SMCs, endothelial cells, and chondrocytes [69]. However, very limited studies have been published for electrospun scaffolds containing only elastin for cardiac tissue engineering purposes [58] [70]. In most of the cases elastin constitutes one part of an electrospun composite as it will be described subsequently.…”