Electrospun nanostructured chitosan–poly(vinyl alcohol) scaffolds: a biomimetic extracellular matrix as dermal substitute

Abstract

Electrospinning is a versatile technique to make biomimetic and nanostructured scaffolds for skin tissue engineering. In this study we have electrospun and characterized chitosan (C)-poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) blend nanofibers as dermal substitutes and compared with 2D C-PVA films. The in vitro characterization of the C-PVA nanofibers and 2D films were evaluated using mouse 3T3 fibroblast cells and our results demonstrated that the cells adhered and proliferated on the surface of C-PVA nanofibers. In our animal studies, the implantation of C-PVA nanofibers along with topical administration of growth factor R-Spondin 1 on full thickness wounds created on rats showed 98.6% wound closure after two weeks post-surgery. The catalase and superoxide dismutase activity of the healing tissue was significantly higher in the groups treated with topical administration of growth factor and C-PVA nanofibers (p < 0.05). Thus these C-PVA nanofibers along with novel growth factor are promising new biomaterials that could be used as dermal substitutes for accelerated wound healing.

Evaluation of a Nisin-Eluting Nanofiber Scaffold To Treat Staphylococcus aureus-Induced Skin Infections in Mice

“…However, histological analysis usually reveals that the wound healing process has been stimulated more in nanofiber-treated groups (55,56). The addition of growth factors to the nanofibers usually accelerates wound closure compared to control nanofiber-treated groups, as would be expected (52,57).…”

“…Tissue engineering has resulted in the gener- ation of various scaffolds to treat excisional wounds and promote wound healing. Chitosan has shown promise in the form of chitosan hydrogels and chitosan acetate bandages, as well as chitosan-(polyvinyl alcohol) nanofibers (50)(51)(52). Although the main purpose of this study was to determine if NF wound dressings could treat S. aureus-induced infections, the effects of the NF and CF wound dressings on wound closure were also investigated.…”

“…CF wound dressings, as well as NF wound dressings, showed a positive influence on wound healing, as determined by histological analysis. Hyaluronic acid nanofibers have been shown to be effective in promoting wound healing of full-thickness excisional wounds in pigs, and chitosan-poly(vinyl alcohol) nanofibers only showed a positive influence on wound healing when used in combination with R-Spondin I, a novel growth factor (52,53). Curcumin-loaded poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) also showed improved wound healing from day 6 compared to plain PCL over a 10-day period in a diabetic murine model (54).…”

Characterization and swelling performance of physically stabilized electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol)/chitosan nanofibres

“…Lin et al [60] have reported on incorporation of chitosan into dilute PVA solution and its effect on the blend viscosity and hence improved uniformity of the resulting nanofibres. Recently, electrospun PVA/chitosan scaffolds including growth factors have been produced to address cell attachment and proliferations for accelerated wound healing [59,61,62].…”

Electrospun aligned poly(propylene carbonate) microfibers with chitosan nanofibers as tissue engineering scaffolds

“…As a unique cationic polysaccharide, chitosan has outstanding biocompatibility, bioadhesion, and biodegradability. There are many methods of introducing chitosan onto synthesized polymers such as alkaline hydrolysis followed by grafting-coating (Lao, Tan, Wang, & Gao, 2008;Sahoo, Sasmal, Nanda, Phani, & Nayak, 2010), layer-by-layer assembly (Zhu, Gao, He, Liu, & Shen, 2003), photo-initiated grafting (Zhu, Zhao, & Ma, 2009), and blending (Cooper, Bhattarai, & Zhang, 2011;Sundaramurthi, Vasanthan, Kuppan, Krishnan, & Sethuraman, 2012). Besides these methods, freeze-drying chitosan solution could also introduce chitosan to the scaffolds (Zhao, Han, Chen, et al, 2012a).…”