Electrospun hybrid nanofibrous meshes with adjustable performance for potential use in soft tissue engineering

Abstract

Electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds have gained extensive attention in the fields of soft tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In this study, a series of biodegradable nanofibrous meshes were fabricated by electrospinning poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and poly( p-dioxanone) (PPDO) blends with various mass ratios. All the as-developed PCL/PPDO nanofibrous meshes possessed smooth and highly aligned fiber morphology. The mean fiber diameter was 521.5 ± 76.6 nm for PCL meshes and 485.8 ± 88.9 nm for PPDO meshes, and the mean fiber diameter seemed to present a decreasing tendency with the increasing of the PPDO component. For pure PCL meshes, the contact angle was about 117.5 ± 1.6°, the weight loss ratio was roughly 0.2% after 10 weeks of degradation, and the tensile strength was 41.2 ± 2.3 MPa in the longitudinal direction and 4.2 ± 0.1 MPa in the transverse direction. It was found that the surface hydrophilicity and in vitro degradation properties of PCL/PPDO meshes apparently increased, but the mechanical properties of PCL/PPDO meshes obviously decreased when more PPDO component was introduced. The biological tests showed that 4:1 PCL/PPDO nanofibrous meshes and 1:1 PCL/PPDO nanofibrous meshes could obviously promote the adhesion and proliferation of human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells more than pure PCL and PPDO meshes and 1:4 PCL/PPDO meshes. The results demonstrated that it is feasible to adjust the surface hydrophilicity, degradation profile, and mechanical properties as well as biological properties of as-obtained nanofibrous meshes by blending PCL and PPDO components. This study provides meaningful reference and guidance for the design and development of PCL/PPDO hybrid nanofibrous scaffolds for soft tissue engineering research and application.

Revisión de compositos de biocerámicas y biopolímeros mediante electrohilado para su uso potencial como andamios para la sustitución de piel

“…El electro-spinning se ha explorado ampliamente como una técnica prometedora para fabricar andamios de microfibras, que ha atraído una gran atención en los campos de la medicina regenerativa y la ingeniería de tejidos, como la cicatrización de heridas, el transporte de fármacos, así como la ingeniería de tejidos osteocondrales y una gran variedad de usos como sustituto de membranas (Qi et al, 2021). En materiales como apósitos para heridas, tomando en cuenta que los materiales nanoestructurados se caracterizan por tener la estructura interna o la estructura superficial modulada de cero a tres dimensiones con un tamaño de escala menor de 100 nm; se dice entonces que las membranas electrohiladas poseen diversas características nano-estructurales que las hacen ideales para esta aplicación como apósito de un área de superficie específica, mejorada en comparación con las microfibras fabricadas por otros métodos de hilado en seco o en húmedo, lo que proporciona más sitios de crecimiento y adhesión celular.…”

State-of-the-Art Review of Electrospun Gelatin-Based Nanofiber Dressings for Wound Healing Applications

“…Most recently, electrospinning has been widely explored as a promising technique to fabricate nanofiber nonwoven mats, which have attracted intense attention in the fields of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, such as wound healing, drug carrier, as well as osteochondral and gastrointestinal tissue engineering, etc. [ 15 ]. As wound dressing materials, electrospun nanofiber mats possess several outstanding merits.…”

Designing an Innovative Electrospinning Strategy to Generate PHBV Nanofiber Scaffolds with a Radially Oriented Fibrous Pattern

“…Recently, electrospinning has been widely explored to produce fibers with diameters in a range from several nanometers to several hundred nanometers, which is of great interest for fabricating biomaterial scaffolds used in tissue engineering because the electrospun nanofibers have the most similar structure and performance to collagen fibrils in the native tissue ECM [ 6 , 7 ]. Previous studies have demonstrated that the fibers generated by electrospinning could dramatically promote cell adhesion, proliferation, and even directed differentiation, thus resulting in obviously enhanced tissue-regenerative outcomes in animal studies when compared with the fibers fabricated from traditional spinning methods such as melt spinning [ 8 , 9 ]. According to the statistics, more than one hundred different types of polymers from natural or synthetic sources have been successfully electrospun into nanofibers, and researchers can precisely modulate the biocompatibility, biodegradation, and physical and chemical properties of electrospinning-based tissue scaffolds by selecting different spinning compositions [ 10 , 11 ].…”